Deere Recycles The Rain

Dec. 21, 2004

When it rains in the Dutch town Horst, about 80 miles southeast of Amsterdam, water pours off the roof of the Deere & Co. agricultural sprayer factory and into four 2,600-gallon underground tanks. The water is drawn, rain or shine, from the tanks at John Deere Fabriek Horst BV and used to test sprayers for compliance with operator safety and environmental protection standards, a process that requires a lot of water. Tank sizes on the sprayers, which are used mainly in orchards and on farms, range from 260 gallons to 1,040 gallons. And every sprayer is tested and calibrated before shipment to customers in Europe. From January 2001, when the underground tanks were put in place, until January 2004, the factory collected and then used more than 2.6 million gallons of rainwater in its two end-of-production-line quality test stations. Recycling rainwater has saved Deere money and dramatically reduced the cycle time for sprayer testing. The company figures the free water from often-rainy skies over Horst would have cost the sprayer factory about US$0.65 per 100 gallons had it been purchased from the local water utility. At the quality test stations, tanks on the sprayers are filled at the rate of 62 gallons a minute -- nearly 10 times faster than they were when water came from the local utility. A result is a 40% reduction in cycle time, says Wim Jans, supervisor of quality and environment at the Horst plant and the person the company credits with coming up with the idea of collecting rainwater to test sprayers. "I saw some greenhouses using this principle for giving the plants water, and so I thought we can do it also in the factory," says Jans. Although Jans' exact idea has not been put to work elsewhere in the company, "we do have some innovative uses of water taking place in a few other factories," says Laurie Zelnio, Deere's Moline, Ill.-based director of safety and environment. For example, instead of using chemicals to treat wastewater, engineers at John Deere Werke in Mannheim, Germany, are testing a process that uses roof-mounted troughs of plants to remove pollutants from water that's used to wash tractors prior to painting. "That whole process of treating the water that way is 75% less than the cost of the chemicals," says Zelnio. Meanwhile, at three Deere plants in Mexico, "process wastewater is treated through ultrafiltration . . . and used for irrigation -- either the grass in some cases or, at one factory, they grow agave plants out in front of the factory, [which is] basically in a desert area," says Mike McGuire, Deere's manager of environmental control.

About the Author

John McClenahen | Former Senior Editor, IndustryWeek

John S. McClenahen, is an occasional essayist on the Web site of IndustryWeek, the executive management publication from which he retired in 2006. He began his journalism career as a broadcast journalist at Westinghouse Broadcasting’s KYW in Cleveland, Ohio. In May 1967, he joined Penton Media Inc. in Cleveland and in September 1967 was transferred to Washington, DC, the base from which for nearly 40 years he wrote primarily about national and international economics and politics, and corporate social responsibility.

      McClenahen, a native of Ohio now residing in Maryland, is an award-winning writer and photographer. He is the author of three books of poetry, most recently An Unexpected Poet (2013), and several books of photographs, including Black, White, and Shades of Grey (2014). He also is the author of a children’s book, Henry at His Beach (2014).

      His photograph “Provincetown: Fog Rising 2004” was selected for the Smithsonian Institution’s 2011 juried exhibition Artists at Work and displayed in the S. Dillon Ripley Center at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., from June until October 2011. Five of his photographs are in the collection of St. Lawrence University and displayed on campus in Canton, New York.

      John McClenahen’s essay “Incorporating America: Whitman in Context” was designated one of the five best works published in The Journal of Graduate Liberal Studies during the twelve-year editorship of R. Barry Leavis of Rollins College. John McClenahen’s several journalism prizes include the coveted Jesse H. Neal Award. He also is the author of the commemorative poem “Upon 50 Years,” celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of Wolfson College Cambridge, and appearing in “The Wolfson Review.”

      John McClenahen received a B.A. (English with a minor in government) from St. Lawrence University, an M.A., (English) from Western Reserve University, and a Master of Arts in Liberal Studies from Georgetown University, where he also pursued doctoral studies. At St. Lawrence University, he was elected to academic honor societies in English and government and to Omicron Delta Kappa, the University’s highest undergraduate honor. John McClenahen was a participant in the 32nd Annual Wharton Seminars for Journalists at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. During the Easter Term of the 1986 academic year, John McClenahen was the first American to hold a prestigious Press Fellowship at Wolfson College, Cambridge, in the United Kingdom.

      John McClenahen has served on the Editorial Board of Confluence: The Journal of Graduate Liberal Studies and was co-founder and first editor of Liberal Studies at Georgetown. He has been a volunteer researcher on the William Steinway Diary Project at the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., and has been an assistant professorial lecturer at The George Washington University in Washington, D.C.