Green Cabinet Features
Our cabinets are manufactured by Schrocks of Walnut Creek in the heart of Ohio's Amish Country.
Their culture and construction methods bring enormous environmental benefits. Here's a statement from Schrocks:
Providing products and services that improve the health and comfort of the people we interact with, while continuing to respect the heritage of our forefathers who were cautious to adope technological change, and therefore maintained many of the principles and culture of the green environment.
Our Culture
Waste utilization: Schrocks places a high priority on reducing waste. First is the effort to reduce the production of waste and second is to ensure all forestry-derived waste products are utilized. These waste products are burned in our state-of-the-art, virtually smoke-free boiler. The resulting heat cures the finish and heats our facility.
Sawdust is taken home by our employees to provide bedding for their horses, which in turn gets used to fertilize their home-grown gardens and the cycle starts all over again.
Energy-Efficient Vehicles (including hybrid) are used where possible. On an average day you may see fewer than 25 vvehicles in our parking lots. This is a company that employs 200! Dozens of our employees bike to work while many others carpool. Most of our employees have horse & buggy as their main source of transportation.
Shipping: Many companies use cardboard boxes to ship cabinets. We ship cabinets packed in reusable blankets, saving thousands of trees.These blankets are returned to be used over and over again.
Product Longevity: Built to last products are more Green, reducing the need for disposal replacement. Our products are made with future generations in mind.
Our Components
Hardwood: The Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) is the primary accrediting agency for sustainable managed forestry operations. Only 3 percent of domestic timber carries the FSC label. The current volume of hardwood in American forests is 352 billion cubic feet, with a growth of 10.2 billion cubic feet a year. This compares to the annual removal of 6 billion cubic feet. The supply of our raw material is growing! Traditionally-sourced American hardwoods (the default selection for Schrocks), especially those species native to our region, minimized the gas and oil needed to get these materials to us.
Plywood: The number one distinguishing feature of a green cabinet is that the box material is free of urea-formaldehyde. While particleboard and MDF cabinet boxes are less expensive than plywood, Schrocks uses neither. Our cabinet boxes are constructed with formaldehyde-free Pure Bond Plywood, manufactured by Columbia Forest Products and is compliant with LEED standards.
Finish: By default, Schrocks uses conventional finishes. We have, however, researched and even used water-based finishes. There is a misconception that water-based finishes are low-VOC. This is not always the case. In addition, we have found the sheen and durability of water-based finishes to be inferior to our conventional finish, and therefore we are not in a position to provide a water-based finish until the quality meets our requirements. We carefully filter, monitor and record our finish waste.
Adhesive: Schrocks uses low, or no VOC, formaldehyde-free adhesives.
