Home > Issue by Date > September 2007

Waste Management And Ralph Waldo Emerson

What does this 19th century writer have to do with recycling?

By Mark Lennon And Katrina Rideout

Institution Recycling Network Waste regulations are not consistent across the board. Some states have adopted specific rules; others rely on federal precedents. (Photo: Institution Recycling Network.)

While many people know Ralph Waldo Emerson (RWE) as an American essayist, poet, and leader of the Transcendentalist movement, few recognize the connection to current recycling efforts. Indeed, RWE was one of the country’s very first environmental pioneers.

But more to the point of operational purposes, the author’s initials, RWE, can be used as an effective mnemonic for any manager looking to set up or expand a recycling program. For facility professionals looking to establish a recycling program or expand a program that’s already active, RWE stands for Regulation Weight Economics—three fundamentals for successful recycling.

R For Regulation

Regulatory compliance is critical for all facility managers. From a recycling perspective, this means removing from the waste stream all materials that are restricted from disposal.

The most critical regulated materials are hazardous, radioactive, and biohazardous wastes. Every facility manager needs to understand these wastes and ensure they are managed in full regulatory compliance. In terms of legal exposure, liability, public relations, and job retention, they are the most important wastes in any facility.

One step below these toxic items are universal wastes—materials that could be classified as hazardous but are so common that strict regulation is impractical. Furthermore, universal wastes can be handled safely with common sense precautions.

Some materials classified as universal waste are televisions and computer monitors with cathode ray tubes (CRTs), fluorescent lamps and other mercury containing lighting [for more on this subject, see “Why Recycle Used Bulbs” by Jennifer Dolin, August 2007, page 18; online at www.todaysfacilitymanager.com/tfm_07_08_servmain.php], fluorescent ballasts that have PCBs, and rechargeable batteries.

Universal waste regulations vary from state to state. Regardless of the geographic location, universal waste practices typically spell out requirements for storage and handling, packaging, transportation, disposition, spill control, recordkeeping, and reporting.

A number of states, mostly in the Northeast and on the West Coast, also regulate some recyclable solid wastes. For example, Massachusetts bans disposal of paper and cardboard, glass, metal, and plastic containers, appliances, tires, lead-acid batteries, and leaf/yard waste. This is a fairly typical set of materials for the states that regulate recyclable wastes.

In 11 states (ME, VT, NY, MA, CT, DE, MI, IA, OR, CA, and HI), facility managers need to comply with container deposit or “Bottle Bills.” The explosion in popularity of non-carbonated bottled water, juices, and teas—not covered by most Bottle Bills—has caused significant upheaval in some areas. The result has left some facility managers in a difficult (and expensive) position, since it requires them to manage a dual stream of redeemable and non-redeemable containers.

Finally, but hardly least important, are local recycling requirements enacted by many municipalities (some of them located in states with no statewide recycling mandates). From a facility manager’s perspective, these are often the most sensitive, because waste is a quite visible part of a facility’s local impact. Needless to say, maintaining good community relations is an important part of the manager’s job.

Solving The Construction
Waste Problem

As much as 40% of the raw materials consumed in the U.S. are used in construction. When building stock turns over, all of these materials become waste. This construction and demolition (C&D) waste stream is enormous—about 130 million tons per year—and accounts for approximately a quarter of the solid waste discarded in the entire country.

This waste stream is also very large when considered facility by facility. Waste from a single construction or renovation project is often more than the amount those in the finished building will throw out in one or two years of occupancy.

The good news is that almost all C&D waste is recyclable, and much of it can be handled for significantly less than the cost of disposal. The most important recyclable C&D materials include:

• Aggregates (concrete, brick, asphalt);

• Metals;

• Wood and wood products;

• Gypsum wallboard scrap;

• Architectural salvage and fixed assets (windows, doors, etc.); and

• Roofing (shingles, membrane, etc.).

Recycling is also critical to sustainable building ideals and the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) rating system. LEED awards two credits for a 75% recycling rate.

The facility manager may not to be responsible for this waste stream. Often, this job falls to a project manager, architect, or contractor. But the facility manager who is interested in reducing wastes and saving money for the organization will find a way to get involved, because C&D is heavy and costly to dispose of; at the same time, it’s cost-effective and straightforward to recycle and can help pave the way for LEED accreditation.

Local regulations vary widely in how they are applied and enforced. For example, some communities enforce recycling aggressively while others treat recycling as window dressing. Some communities regulate wastes transferred or disposed of locally but don’t address anything direct hauled out of town. For a facility manager, these differences can make a significant difference in how recycling is implemented.

W For Weight

After regulatory compliance, the primary goal of recycling efforts is to get weight out of the waste stream. No matter where a facility is located, the major financial benefit of recycling is not the revenue from selling recyclable materials; it’s the money saved by not throwing them away.

In the Northeast, Florida, and much of the West Coast, this savings (“avoided disposal cost”) can amount to over $100/ton. Across much of the rest of the country, landfill disposal costs range anywhere from $35 to $55/ton, which translates into an expense that’s avoided for every ton recycled.

What contributes most to the weight of trash? The simple answer is fiber, fiber, and fiber.

With few exceptions, paper is the heaviest material in the waste stream. It is also the easiest to recycle. It packs quickly, it’s easy to transport, and there are good markets (including markets for mixed paper) almost everywhere in the country.

Cardboard can be more problematic. Cardboard is mostly air, and it doesn’t pay to haul air for recycling purposes.

At facilities that generate a lot of cardboard, the air can be squeezed out in a compactor or baler, and cardboard can be recycled cost effectively, thus diverting significant tonnage from disposal. But if cardboard is a small part of the waste stream, it may not be a prime recycling target; it won’t take much weight from the dumpster, and it can be expensive to recycle as loose material.

After paper, the heaviest materials in the waste stream vary widely. For facilities with a campus setting, leaf and yard wastes will often be the most logical recycling targets. There are different management options. For example, grass that’s cut with mulching mowers can be left where it falls, returning nutrients and organic matter to the soil. [For more on landscaping options, see “Site Maintenance” by Alan Aukeman, Tom Ryan, and Kimberly Turner, June 2007, page 16; online at www.todaysfacilitymanager.com/tfm_07_06_servmain.php.]

Source Reduction: Recycling On The Cheap

It’s often overlooked that the cheapest way to get waste out of the dumpster is not to create it at all. This is the philosophy behind source reduction.

Facility managers can contribute to source reduction in many ways. For example:

• Cleaning products can be purchased in bulk or in concentrates, reducing or eliminating packaging waste.

• Purchasing contracts can be structured requiring suppliers to take back pallets, crates, cardboard boxes, or other packaging, or to ship materials in packaging that’s reusable.

• In functions like food service, single use items can be replaced with reusable equivalents. For example, employees can be provided with reusable mugs that replace paper/styrofoam cups, or bubblers can be substituted for bottled water.

• Inbound packaging can be reused to package outbound materials.

• Cardboard boxes can be sold for reuse instead of being thrown out or recycled.

In addition, the facility manager can take advantage of opportunities to step beyond typical facilities functions. For example, the manager of a large New Hampshire insurance facility noted that the company received and discarded hundreds of telephone books every year. He made the case that phone books could be replaced with electronic search capabilities and eliminated thousands of pounds of waste.

Where autumn leaf fall is significant, it is worth the effort to recycle. Composting is the best option.

If space is available, composting can be done on-site. It’s not difficult but does demand knowledge, time, and attention.

If on-site composting isn’t practical, municipal or commercial facilities exist in many parts of the country. About a dozen states have restricted or banned disposal of leaf and yard waste, and even more offer guidance on how to manage these wastes.

Other heavy contributors to solid waste vary by industry and site, and facility managers seeking to increase recycling and reduce disposal must become thoroughly familiar with their waste stream.

In a commercial or industrial facility, a particular process or packaging waste may be the heaviest material; it could be excess or spoiled production; cutoffs or another byproduct; or plastic or other packaging for inbound materials or outbound product.

For example, at marinas located in parts of the country where winters get cold, shrink wrap used to cover boats in the off season is the heaviest, most troublesome waste. But in places where boats stay in the water year-round, shrink wrap is a non-issue.

E For Economics

After dealing with regulations and weight, a facility manager should look for remaining economic targets in the waste stream. These are materials with significant dollar value, so the cost of recovering them will be more than compensated by revenue from their sale.

The materials that currently best exemplify this category are metals. Fueled by international demand, metal prices are at all time highs. Prices for even the most common light iron grades have doubled or tripled in the past two years; prices for nonferrous metals like copper and aluminum have jumped even higher. Almost any effort to capture metals for recycling will be more than compensated.

Plastics are a surprising recent addition to this high return category. The value of recycled plastic is linked to the price of oil.

With the runup in oil prices starting in 2006, plastic prices have jumped by 50% or more for several of the most common types that are recycled.

A Novel Approach

RWE outlines a path to a sensible and sustainable goal: minimize a facility’s impact on the environment and optimize economic benefits. These concepts inspire the design of an efficient, cost-effective recycling program tailored to the needs of the organization and the specific regulatory and financial environment in which it operates.

Lennon (mlennon@ir-network.com) and Rideout (krideout@ir-network.com) work for Concord, NH-based The Institution Recycling Network. For more information on the organization, visit www.ir-network.com.

Do you have a recycling program in place? E-mail your stories to schwartz@groupc.com.

 

Surplus Property: A Neglected Recyclable

Something that’s generated by every organization is surplus property: desks and chairs, tables, file cabinets, shelving, and partitions. Education and healthcare organizations generate dormitory and library furnishings, laboratory equipment, hospital beds, exam and operating room equipment, and school and medical supplies.

Surplus represents a huge recycling opportunity, but it can also be a major problem. The best surplus can be sold, but this is generally a small fraction of what’s generated.

Institution Recycling Network (Photo: Institution Recycling Network.)

Many organizations try to donate surplus locally, but this is time consuming and ultimately expensive, because local channels are often overwhelmed, selective about what they’ll accept, or unreliable when it comes to picking up the surplus. As a result, most surplus winds up in the dumpster, or at best, it is recycled for its metal or wood content.

This is a shame, because worldwide—and in regions of the U.S. affected by disaster or poverty—there is almost an infinite need for the surplus property that facility managers discard every day.

What’s needed is a matchmaker: someone to put users of surplus together with available supplies. This is a role that The Institution Recycling Network (IRN) has embraced.

IRN works with about two dozen relief and development organizations around the world. When generators tell IRN surplus is available, representatives notify the relief organizations and then match the surplus with those who need it.

When the match is made, IRN handles the logistics of the transfer, hiring moving crews, loading containers, and preparing manifests and customs forms. The generating organization usually pays the cost to remove the surplus from its facility and load the containers (costs they’d incur even if the material was simply thrown away), while the nonprofit pays for long distance transportation and distribution to recipients.

It’s a win-win for both organizations. Generators typically pay less than they would for disposal or recycling, add the surplus into their recycling rate (including the rate calculated for LEED projects), and gain great public relations. Recipients get usable materials in good condition—materials that can have a tremendous impact in the communities where they are distributed, and for which the alternative, quite literally, is nothing.

Institution Recycling Network (Photo: Institution Recycling Network.)

For example, says Tony Barbieri of Food for the Poor, one of IRN’s partners, “In most of the schools in Haiti, children stand or sit on the floor because of the lack of school furniture. Their need for school furnishings is really desperate.”

This need is echoed worldwide, where disaster and poverty create a tremendous need for materials that can be used in homes, schools, clinics, and businesses.

“We’re fielding more and more requests from across the country to handle surplus for reuse,” says Mark Berry, IRN’s manager of surplus programs. “Organizations recognize the huge economic and environmental waste in throwing away furnishings and equipment that still have good life in them. We’re happy to be the matchmaker that can make sure this surplus is sent where it is most desperately needed.”

Click here to qualify for a complimentary subscription to Today's Facility Manager Magazine.