Green Commitment

At Continental Brass we believe it makes good sense to reduce our environmental impact. We are a second generation company and look forward to passing our legacy on to the next generation. To do this we are committed to keeping the 3 R’s of environmental awareness a vital part of the cultural standard at Continental Brass. Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle are the tenets with which we have built our company’s manufacturing processes, and we will continue to do so for a sustainable future.

Green Manufacturing Processes

Reducing Our Impact on the Environment

• We routinely seek high quality substitute materials that are more efficient in our processes or which have the potential to minimize our impact on the environment by reducing waste and fugitive emissions.
• We maintain a written Toxics Use and Waste Reduction Plan that identifies every regulated material used in our facility and evaluates methods of eliminating or reducing the use of those materials. This plan guides our efforts for continuous improvement.
• We have full time employees with responsibility for ensuring compliance with environmental regulations, company policies, and for providing safety and environmental awareness training to all our employees.

Reuse Whenever Appropriate

• We partner with our suppliers to find reusable packaging solutions like returnable drums that can be used over again for the same product rather than instituting a cycle of manufacturing replacement containers because the first one was sent to a landfill or reprocessed at a recycling facility.
• For our customers ordering hardware in bulk quantities we purchase once used newsprint from local recycling collection and sorting centers to provide filler material rather than using styrofoam or plastic air bags.
• We teach our employees at every level to conduct quality control inspections that distinguish products that can be reworked internally at a lower cost to the environment from those that need to be salvaged for recycling.

Recycling as a Cultural Standard

• Our main manufacturing plant is located in Portland, Oregon, a city long recognized as a leader in sustainable living. Our facility, our employees, and our local government make it possible to create an atmosphere in which the first thought when it’s time to discard any material is to look for the proper recycling bin.
• In our production facility we recycle something at every stage of our operation including cardboard, wood, and plastic from shipping & receiving; zinc and other metals from production and maintenance activities; even our waste streams that get designated as hazardous materials get recycled through fuel blending and metals recovery.
• It’s not only our production facility that recycles. Our office has paper recycling at every work desk. Spent printer cartridges and obsolete computer equipment also find their way into Portland’s many recycling centers.