2021 Owens Corning Sustainability Report | Reducing Our Environmental Footprint | Waste Management | 183 SPEAKING OF SUSTAINABILITY Jill Krueger Engineering Leader Waste management is essential to our sustainability journey, as it ties in closely with our aspirations for the circular economy. Jill Krueger, a program manager at Owens Corning, is one of the people who are working diligently to help us achieve our goals. Jill is part of the team that is finding new ways to divert byproducts related to the manufacturing of composite materials away from the landfill. She has a great deal to share about the challenges related to these endeavors, as well as the excitement that comes from seeing Owens Corning’s progress. As our customers are embracing the circular economy, they’re reaching out to partner with us. ” “ Photo courtesy of Jill Krueger On recycling as part of our waste-to-landfill goals Instead of putting manufacturing byproduct into a landfill, those materials will go back into our melter. It has real advantages for our plants because not only are we avoiding the landfill costs, but we’re putting a material into the melter that Owens Corning is very familiar with — our own glass. This isn’t an easy project. Virgin raw materials are very pure, and when we take materials that are a byproduct of our manufacturing or byproduct of our customers’ manufacturing, there have been additional steps taken that potentially can dirty up the material. They can fall on the floor. There can be additional chemicals. And so, the real art and technique is how to separate what has been added to get back to the good stuff that we want. On the enthusiasm of our external partners and internal teams I love when I hear stories that our customers are eager to start sending us their materials. They want to know the criteria for the program and how they can get involved. That makes me feel like there’s a real need that we’re addressing as a corporation. I also get really excited, because of my technical background, when I meet with my team and I hear that we’ve addressed another concern and that we feel pretty confident that we have the right technology in place to make sure that a contaminant doesn’t get into our melter, but is separated before we start that process. So, I just love seeing the eagerness from our customers, and the excitement from our internal technical team as they start checking off that this was a problem and now we know how to solve it. On how the legacy of Owens Corning inspires optimism One thing that’s really giving the Composites recycling program an advantage is that Owens Corning has a deep history in sustainability. We’ve been working to improve our footprint and our handprint for over 20 years, and during that time, we’ve done a lot of work to figure out what the technology might look like to enable putting recycled materials into our melter. The second piece that I think is helpful is that we have a good reputation with our customers, so as our customers are thinking about how they can start embracing the circular economy themselves, they’re reaching out and asking to partner with us. Our customers are coming forward and offering to be part of the solution. I think those are the two things that are really going to move this forward in a quick way toward creating that circular economy.