ACS - Caring for the environment, staff and products

Australian Country Spinners at their Wangaratta manufacturing complex has pursued a policy of continuous improvement in all activity areas that has resulted in gaining ISO accreditation:

AS/NZS ISO 14001. 1996 Environmental Management Systems

AS/NZS ISO 4801. 2001 Occupational Health & Safety
Management Systems

AS/NZS ISO 9001. 2000 Quality Management Systems

Extract from the Ecology Book – Government Department Publication 2002
Chapter 4 - Water Management - page 53

Reducing consumption and pollution of river water.

Australian Country Spinners (ACS) is the nation’s largest producer of hand-knitting and industrial yarns.
It spins and dyes more than 2500 tonnes of yarn for domestic and export markets annually.
The company is situated at Wangaratta, Victoria, on a tributary of the Murray River. All of its waste water is
sent to a treatment plant before being discharged to the river. In 1992, the company implemented production changes that reduced its consumption of water per kilogram of yarn by 44 per cent; it also achieved a 26 per cent reduction in chemical usage.
Before the changes, ACS used around 1 million litres of water a day. Each kilogram of finished yarn required 250 litres of water and 3 kilograms of chemicals.
A waste audit demonstrated that 90 per cent of the company’s waste water was relatively clean, so the
company segregated its waste streams, and recycled and reused the clean water within the plant.
ACS also scaled down its use of sulphur based chemicals in order to reduce the amount of dissolved solids and potential algal nutrients in the waste stream. It introduced a low-temperature dyeing technology and investigated dye-bath recycling.
The company worked with the CSIRO Division of Polymers and Chemistry to research and develop the new processes.
The total cost of the changes amounted to $150 000.
Increased efficiencies in the use of water, chemicals, gas and electricity paid that cost back in only two
months of operation.
ACS thus profited in multiple ways through its decision to use water more responsibly.
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RE-USING FRESH WATER
In order to ensure that we have enough fresh water in the future, we must adopt technologies that capture, distribute and use water more efficiently. Currently 97 per cent of all rain falling on cities and 86 per cent of effluent water is wasted. Even with existing technologies, that water could be safely used to irrigate urban landscapes and supplement water supplies for communities and industry. Urban effluent, including treated sewage, is already being used successfully in Wagga Wagga in southern New South Wales to irrigate
timber plantations. The system protects the Murrumbidgee River, the soil and groundwater, and uses
waste water to produce valuable forest products – again the result of research done by the CSIRO in collaboration with government and industry.