SUN Guadalajara's recycling program has been in full swing since October 1998. During the first four months of the program, the factory recycled more than 1.5 million cameras. Most of the Fun Savers' components are recyclable: Their plastic exterior, for example, can be melted down into small resin pellets, which then become part of the 10,000 pounds of resin that are fed daily into SUN's 58 molding presses.
Right now, Kodak gets back 70% of the cameras that it produces, and it reuses 86% of the material from those cameras. In the future, the company hopes that fewer and fewer of its so-called throwaway cameras will actually get thrown away.
"We've taken the best practices that we learned in Rochester, and we've added a few best practices of our own," says VanDeMoere. "We've built a cost-effective plant that pays very close attention to details. That means we're not just making a lot of cameras -- we're making a lot of good cameras."
Lisa Chadderdon (lchadderdon@fastcompany.com) is a Fast Company staff writer. You can visit the Eastman Kodak Co. on the Web -- In English (www.kodak.com) or in Spanish (www.kodak.com.mx).
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