Every year, United Corrstack (UCI) saves 6,000 acres of trees by supplying box shops with products made from 100 percent recycled corrugated cartons and is Sustainable Forestry Initiative (SFI) certified. UCI also offers consultation services for customers on old corrugated cardboard recycling programs.
UCI’s biggest green initiative, though, is still to come. The company is expected to begin running its own power plant, Evergreen Community Power, this summer. The $135 million project brought 25 new jobs to the Reading-based company and about 50 jobs offsite to process and transport biofuels that will run the plant, which will provide UCI another revenue stream from the sale of electricity.
Ben Franklin Technology Partners linked UCI with Northampton Community College’s Electrotechnology Applications Center to research and quantify potential sources of biofuel in the region.
“That enabled us to move to the funding phase of our project,” says UCI general manager Dave Staufer, who has been with the company for 11 years.
UCI, founded in 1993, has 30 customers, mostly within 150 miles of Reading. That allows for next-day delivery throughout the Mid-Atlantic region. The company’s specialized customer services include coded labels for warehouse management systems, electronic data interchange transmissions and just-in-time inventory. Because it helps control costs–energy makes up 25 percent of the total cost to manufacture paper–the new power plant sets up UCI for future expansion.
The biofuels to run the new power plant come from a local supplier in Berks County and are made up of almost entirely of material headed for the landfill.
