Washington Business Fall 2016 | Washington Business | Page 22

what’s working: sustainability A Clear Path to Energy Efficiency Cardinal Glass helps communities and employers make better use of glass and energy resources for a greener, cleaner world. employer: Cardinal Glass Industries location: This national company operates Washington manufacturing facilities in Winlock, Tumwater and Chehalis, plus a site just across the Oregon border in Hood River. number of employees: About 400 in Washington product: Cardinal creates glass and energy-efficient window products that enable its customers to surpass stringent energy codes. Its Washington-made glass products are sold in the Pacific Northwest and as far away as Alberta and Japan. Glass is created on a bed of molten tin, cut to size, then low emissivity coatings are applied consisting of proprietary micro-thin stacks of materials like zinc, titanium and silver to insulate and reflect heat — letting in light but keeping heat out in summer and warmth in during the winter. innovative environmental stewardship: Making glass is inherently energy-intensive, but Cardinal’s finished product is so energy-efficient that its carbon footprint from glass production is essentially offset within a year by the customer’s reduced carbon output from lower energy use. And Cardinal keeps its energy use as low as possible: When operating at full capacity, Cardinal’s plant in Winlock has one of the lowest total emissions per ton of glass shipped of any conventional float glass plant in the world. Cardinal uses the byproduct from its emissions pollution control process as a material to make new glass, turning about a thousand tons of its precipitate into product each year. The company does the same thing for water, cleaning and reclaiming u