Marshall Boxes Goes Green With Heating System
By: Katrina Irwin
Updated: April 20, 2012
A local company has found a way to keep things warm in the winter, by using their leftovers. It saves on fuel and saves space in the landfills.
Inside Marshall Boxes, there's no such thing as scrap wood. "We have been green for over 20 years," says Jeff Skuse.
This family business has been in Rochester for three generations. They started making custom packaging in the 20's.
"We supply custom industrial packaging so we supply custom palates and crating and wood and plywood components for large manufacturing companies in Western NY and throughout the Northeast," Skuse says.
As you can imagine, there are lots of little pieces left over. But here they use them as fuel. Each work station has a vacuum that sucks up the dust and all of the pieces and transports them along the roof to the furnace in the back.
"An auger turns and feeds the sawdust into our furnace and then it burns and heats the building in the winter,"
adds Skuse.
In the summer the sawdust is donated to a local farmer to use as animal bedding. They put this system in place back in 1991.
"We used to ship large dumpsters out of here every week with plywood and lumber so it saves a lot of space in landfills and also saves us money."
A win for this local business, and the environment.
To learn more about this company, click here.
