TI reached a milestone in 2010, recycling 95 percent of its waste from global manufacturing and business processes.

Several TI sites have actually achieved 100 percent recycling rates. TI's Hjii and Miho sites in Japan have been operating at 100 percent since October 2008. Both plants were recycling more than 99 percent of wastes in 2004 but found the remaining 1 percent tough to achieve.

To help them reach 100 percent, they investigated many waste disposal companies in Japan and selected a process flow that could properly recycle the types of waste those facilities generated.

Communication has played an important role in achieving higher recycling rates globally. Employees are educated on how to properly segregate waste in areas such as offices and restrooms. In addition, transparent, open-top collection containers are provided throughout the campuses, along with a set of separation rules to eliminate sorting errors.

TI's Clark site in the Philippines and its Aguascalientes, Mexico facility are the most recent TI sites to achieve 100 percent waste-efficiency rate. Several other sites recycle at rates in the mid-90s. Elevated awareness of project managers about their recycle opportunities and proper segregation of waste by individual employees have resulted in broad participation and successful recycling.

In North Texas, the long list of materials that are now recycled includes most of the consumables that TI purchases. The most recent category of wastes entering TI's recycle stream is organic waste, including food scraps from cafeterias, yard trimmings and paper towels from restrooms.

Organic recycling began at TI's Dallas-area sites with a review of the sites' nonhazardous waste stream. The goal was to first reduce overall waste.

Bruce Willette of TI's North America Non-manufacturing Facilities said recycling is something TI already knows how to do, and employees know that it saves money and reduces environmental impact.

"Anytime you have waste, it means you have inefficiency in your operations," Willette said. "Waste costs money. Opening up our recycling program to include organics is a whole new opportunity to save money, reuse resources and reduce our environmental footprint."

TI began working with its cafeterias vendor to provide customers with compostable to-go boxes, cups, straws, napkins and utensils. Although using compostable items was slightly more expensive than foam or plastic, TI subsidized the expense. The reduced volume of non-recyclable trash helps reduce municipal disposal costs.

As a bonus, a local company takes TI's organic waste and composts it off site to create compost, topdressing and soil-blend products for sale in the community. The community benefits, and TI uses some of the products for its on-site landscaping.

"It's practically a closed-loop process,"Willette said. "We all benefit from that."