Employees at the Caterpillar plant in Lafayette have been known to produce elevated gardens, chicken coops, a barn door, outdoor patio furniture and a wooden quilt frame.聽If the project requires wood, Caterpillar has a truck load ripe for the employees’ taking 鈥� 4,000 pounds of wood a week, actually.聽Wood, lots of wood, not something you might associate with such a manufacturer.聽Caterpillar’s production menu includes聽construction and mining equipment, diesel and natural gas engines, industrial gas turbines and diesel-electric locomotives. That’s a snapshot of what’s created inside a Caterpillar facility.
What’s produced by crafty Caterpillar聽employees聽in Lafayette at their own homes is a source of pride for the employees and an extension of the company’s mission of sustainability.聽“At the Lafayette facility, we make big engines,” said Justin聽Koehler, environmental and safety manager, “and those big engines come in some big packaging. You can imagine, we accumulate a lot of wood scraps that’s reusable. We identify the wood left over from the packaging as useful and valuable for other uses.”
Hauling off the wood left over from the shipping crates associated with assembling the enormous equipment meets one of the company’s core values, sustainability, said Koehler, as Caterpillar strives to limit its impact on the environment.聽“We are always looking for ways to reduce our carbon footprint,” Koehler told the Journal & Courier, “to be聽better for the community and for the world. Sustainability is聽very attractive when bringing on new employees, to be able to provide a place of employment we can be proud of.”