In trying to reduce the amount of toxic chemicals Widget Manufacturing uses, Tyrone found a safer substitute for the harmful cleanser used to clean off newly manufactured widgets. The new cleansers do the job as well as the old toxic chemicals, but they don't harm the environment. When Rosy's crew packs widgets for shipping, they use a popcorn-like packing material made from corn starch. Because the new material is made from corn starch, it can be dissolved in water when it's no longer needed. Return Reduced Packaging Tyrone and a team of Widget workers experimented with several ways to reduce the packaging used to ship widgets.
Corrugated boxes are a major source of waste in industry.
Willie, one of the Widget workers, found that boxes returned from customers could be reused and repackaged up to five times before recycling them. Now, Widget Manufacturing offers to pay for shipping if its customers return the packaging. With the combined efforts of Widget plants across the country, Widget workers saved 2.9 million pounds of wood by collecting wooden shipping pallets. Then, they either returned pallets to suppliers, sold them, or repaired broken pallets so they could be used again. Widgets Rosy and Tyrone set up a widget repair station for fixing broken or worn-down widgets.