Coatesville
ArcelorMittal Coatesville, located about 40 miles west of Philadelphia, has produced iron and steel since 1810. Today, the Coatesville plant operates an electric arc furnace and has a capacity of approximately 900,000 tons of raw steel annually. It received ISO 14001 certification, demonstrating its commitment to environmental excellence. An internationally recognized standard, ISO 14001 signifies that the facility has implemented an effective environmental management system.
Examples of Environmental Excellence
Encouraging recycling
ArcelorMittal Coatesville had been recycling paper since the 1990s and expanded its program to include plastic, glass and aluminum in 2008. Recently, with the help of hourly and salaried personnel, the Environmental team began a trial program to start including recyclable wood in its efforts. To date, this trial has proved successful.
Distinctive blue and white recycling bins are located throughout the plant to collect clean plastic bottles and jars, glass food and drink containers, aluminum beverage cans, and steel food and beverage cans. Janitorial services places the contents of the smaller bins into one of three 30-cubic-yard containers supplied by an outside transportation company. Once full, the materials are hauled away to a recycling center.
In the first four months of the program, the plant shipped 3,060 lbs. of plastic bottles, cans and glass to a recycling center rather than to a landfill.
Investing in prevention
ArcelorMittal Coatesville recently replaced a process residual collection basin to ensure that floodwaters from nearby Brandywine Creek would never overflow into the basin and potentially co-mingle with these process materials. The $675,000 investment improvement ensures preventative environmental protection. The new concrete basin is lined in Bentonite (a natural sealant) and surrounded on three sides by a 4-foot concrete wall.
Clean-up of a historic creek
Each year ArcelorMittal Coatesville teams up with the first small watershed association in America, The Brandywine Valley Association (BVA), to clean up portions of the Brandywine Creek that runs through the plant property. Volunteers paddled downstream, picking up trash from the stream banks and stream bottom. Last year more than 2,580 pounds of refuse was pulled from the creek.