At General Kinematics, sustainability is essential to everything we do. Whether through daily business practices, equipment design, or the foundational structure of our company, sustainability plays a role.
Sustainable business practices
General Kinematics strives to operate our manufacturing facilities in a manner that leaves the most negligible environmental impact possible. Our facilities recycle more than 2,000,000 lbs. of scrap metal per year. We continually upgrade processes to utilize innovative and efficient technology, reducing paper and resource consumption and optimizing packaging to use none, use less, reuse, or use biodegradable materials when possible.
Sustainable Partners
Our policies dictate that all vendors be ethically sourced and quality certified to meet the expectations of ISO. It is important to us that our manufacturing ecosystem works together to reach the same goals and quality standards.
Community involvement
In each community where General Kinematics operates, we seek opportunities to share our skills and benefit our neighbors.
Our Community Action Team is involved with local organizations to give back and help improve our community, both for the environment around us and the people who live in it.
GK employees continually seek opportunities to volunteer and collect goods/ funds for local donations. General Kinematics is often represented by employees at community events, and works with the local school district to provide frequent facility tours to students.
A skilled workforce is crucial to sustainability, and General Kinematics actively participates in best-practice organizations and consortiums in our communities. In McHenry County, Illinois, General Kinematics is an active leader in the Manufacturing Pathways Consortium, promoting careers in manufacturing to local youth through job shadows, internships, apprenticeships, and education events. Within these activities, we share our pride in all aspects of manufacturing – challenging prejudices that might keep people from considering manufacturing careers.
Sustainable Collaboration
In conjunction with our extensive customer base, General Kinematics recycling equipment and systems help divert millions of tons of waste material from landfill every year. This reduces the environmental impact created by acquiring raw materials and reroutes renewable resources into the production stream, reducing energy consumption and maximizing material value.
Green Designs
General Kinematics has pioneered environmentally responsible process design for material handling applications. GK’s Two-Mass vibratory drive systems save energy by using two-thirds less horsepower to achieve the same output as a single-mass (brute force) system. This reduction in horsepower significantly reduces energy consumption and related electrical costs. Two-Mass equipment is also more cost-effective to maintain, as belts, large motors, and bearings are eliminated.
In addition to our Two-Mass design, GK equipment is not built for planned obsolescence; our equipment is meant to take a beating and outlast the competition. We pride ourselves on durability and longevity, preserving natural resources depleted through constant reproduction and replacement. You can find GK units in the field that have been running for more than 60 years, and units decommissioned by a customer frequently reappear installed at a different customer facility and even in a different application.
When a unit reaches the end of its long life, our design allows for easy disassembly and separation of materials. Those materials are more than 90% infinitely recyclable, further reducing our environmental footprint.
Sustainable Customers
Materials reclamation is crucial to reducing the environmental impact in our customer’s processes. GK offers a complete line of solutions for the reclamation of sprue, sand, dross, slag, ferrous and non-ferrous metals, bio-products, fines, wood, and other reusable products that generally are discarded. By re-utilizing these materials, our customers reduce raw material costs and increase the efficiency of the production process.
A Sustainable Future
We continue to improve our efforts as we find new ways to reduce waste and support our communities. General Kinematics is proud to support foundations that promote recycling awareness, industry sustainability, and process improvements:
