A foundational change

Sustainability was not top of mind for companies in the 1950s, but recycling was the main reason Wearwell LLC, originally known as Tennessee Mat, began producing industrial mats in 1950.

The Smyrna, Tennessee-based company launched when its founders, Max Greenberg and Charley Gross, saw an opportunity to convert scrap tires into industrial mats.

“They would take old tires, cut them down and put them together with wires and make mats you used to see at businesses,” says Phil Huss, product and engineering manager at Wearwell. “We were taking this material that nobody else wanted and making a product out of it. At the time, it wasn’t about sustainability. It was more that there was this waste and we wanted to turn it into something valuable.”

For the last 30 years, Wearwell has focused on developing safety products and ergonomic floor-related products for industrial workers. Huss says sustainability has become a greater consideration in product design, with the company seeking opportunities to include plastic scrap in its products this past decade.

‘Environmentally minded’

“Our majority owner [Elliot Greenberg] is environmentally minded and so am I,” Huss says. “We try to push for that kind of thought to be put into products when we’re developing them so that we do the best we can.”

He continues, “We’ve come to the conclusion that in order to fix the plastic [waste] problem, we have to make sure there’s demand for recycled plastic. If there’s not, it doesn’t matter how much people put in their recycling bins if it’s not turned into anything. We have to create that demand so that there’s a value for it, so people will do something with it.”

Wearwell created new demand for plastic scrap about a year and a half ago when it developed its Foundation modular platform system. The line incorporates 100-percent-postconsumer-recycled (PCR) polypropylene (PP).

Huss says this is the first time Wearwell has used solely PCR in a product.

“We had bought some postconsumer material in the past, but it was spotty,” he says. “For this product, I knew there were sources of PCR polypropylene out there that are good and controlled.”

Product development

Before Wearwell developed the idea for its Foundation product line, Huss says it considered ways it could use PCR. Wearwell also realized it could secure PCR PP from Troy, Alabama-based KW Plastics.

“KW Plastics is not too far from us, so we reached out to them early in the process and talked through the different product lines they had available,” Huss says, adding that KW Plastics produces “many tons of PCR PP” and that the company ended up being “a good partner.”

From there, Wearwell developed Foundation modular platforms, which are made from PCR PP and aluminum. The modular platforms raise industrial workers to the height they need to be at to perform their jobs. Huss adds that the platforms also help to improve worker safety environments.

“It raises people above hazards, such as pipes or wires running through a working area,” he says.

Huss adds that Wearwell often customizes the Foundation platforms for each application, offering modularity in flooring solutions. Standard parts enable customers to assemble platforms in 18-inch increments without using tools, he says. A variety of configurations are possible, and Huss adds that if a company needs to move a platform, it can be reconfigured easily.

Incorporating PCR PP into the platform’s design was not too challenging, he says. However, Wearwell does use one additive with KW’s PCR PP to prevent sinks from forming in the Foundation modular platforms tiles. “That’s the only thing we had to do as far as material adjustments.”

Using 100-percent-PCR PP also is “simpler” than mixing the materials used for the platform, Huss adds. “Our feedstock of raw material has never given us reason to look at doing anything other than 100-percent-PCR PP.”

Wearwell is seeking to incorporate PCR into more of its products. “We are looking at introducing PCR to our cable protection line,” Huss says.

Since their debut, Foundation products have been used to help workers in machine centers, injection molding operations as well as a company in the aviation industry. Huss adds that Foundation platforms can be used in many more industrial applications.

Wearwell’s Foundation modular mats made from recycled PP are one of many products the company makes that use recycled content. Sixteen of Wearwell’s 90 products use between 50 percent to 100 percent recycled materials, according to the Wearwell website, while 13 other products contain between 33 percent and 50 percent recycled content.

Wearwell says it continues to examine using alternative compounds for all products when feasible.

The author is an associate editor for the Recycling Today Media Group and can be reached at msmalley@gie.net.