While landfilling appears to be more entrenched than ever, there are still advances being made in the processing of recyclables.

By Charles D. Bader

Balefills
Long Haul
Prospects for Recycling
Growing the Markets

For years now, when you spoke or wrote about the processing of MSW, you meant recycling or composting or preparation for waste-to-energy (WTE), but you never, never mentioned landfilling, except in the context of landfill: diversion from. Today, in the year when many states’ diversion goals are coming due, ironically the term being whispered more and more is landfill: diversion to.

"The recycling bubble is bursting a little bit," remarks Jim Jagou of Harris Waste Management Company in Peachtree City, GA. "The markets have been so volatile that the privates are leery of investing in recycling, not to mention WTE. And that attitude is spreading to municipalities now. In the past few years, more newspaper has gone into the landfills than has been recycled."

There is much evidence to back Jagou’s assertion. Towns in Florida and Virginia, states that were considered strongholds of recycling, now are considering scrapping the process. And the New Orleans suburb of Harahan did drop curbside recycling last November. What’s more, this spring the pervasive rumors of midnight landfilling of recyclables seemed to be corroborated when it was reported that a county in Arizona left recycling bins out for residents to use, but actually was landfilling any recyclables that were placed there. The reason? Apparently the county had lost its buyers for recycled materials.

"That’s the reason recycling is losing ground," claims Ken Pratt, president of the solid waste division of Al-Jon Inc. in Ottumwa, IA. "Recycling’s fatal flaw is that it doesn’t have a market size anywhere near the volume of the materials that could be produced through recycling. Thus, either you recycle less to get a fair profit or you recycle more and ruin the market, and someone ends up landfilling the recyclables they collected. This is happening more than anyone wants to admit. I personally have seen trucks running a recycling bin out to a landfill at night."

Bob Hauser of Camp Dresser & McKee in Tampa, FL, puts it a slightly different way: "The recycling market for basic commodities has matured now, and recycling has reached a plateau. The competition is formidable. There is a glut of landfill capacity, and it is so much cheaper to operate a landfill, even if you have to haul the MSW long distances. You must remember that recycling is the most expensive thing we do in solid waste management. If a municipality could choose to recycle just 5% of its wastestream, it might make money; at 10% it would break even only with difficulty, and each additional percent costs heavily."

"What created the recycling movement isn’t with us anymore," notes Mike Alexander, an official with the Northeast Recycling Coalition, one of five state regional alliances. "The perception that we were going to bury ourselves in trash - the great symbol of the garbage barge with nowhere to go - that’s gone."

And although recycling once seemed to be a moral imperative in this country, 100 million Americans don’t recycle. Only 1% of Montana residents have access to recycling, and that "penetration" is just 55% in forward-looking California. Pratt flatly states, "Over the past 10 years, recycling has barely kept up with population growth in keeping waste from going into landfills. I seriously question whether we have been landfilling any less."

It is this sobering picture that apparently has caused the remaining large privates to refrain from major investments in recycling. Observes Steve Maguin, director of the Los Angeles County Sanitation District, "Even prior to the consolidations, privates were less enamored of putting too much investment into recycling. They are certainly still willing to provide the service if local governments will make that investment; they just want to shift the responsibility for that investment. So a wise person might well stop and ask, ‘Why? Does that mean it’s not a good investment?’"

Some municipalities must be thinking that’s a very good question. And this reluctance to invest in recycling appears to have spread to suppliers as well. Pratt frankly states that Al-Jon has backed away from most recycling and is concentrating on its line of machines for - you guessed it - landfills.

"We’re doing quite well with these compactors," he adds. "Since we brought them out in 1997, our annual sales have grown to more than 50 hydrostatically driven compactors a year. We’re becoming a force in the government market for these machines because our compactors are designed for only one purpose: landfill compaction. They are neither bucket loaders nor embankment compactors modified for use in solid waste. Our design criteria included exceptional maneuverability and extremely high clearance to produce a compactor capable of operating on piles of unstable refuse, ascending and descending slopes, pushing and spreading heavy truckloads of waste, crushing and densifying refuse, and covering it with earth."

Designing a product line with models costing between $350,000 and $600,000 each for a single application was certainly a bold step, and its success further indicates the increasing magnitude of the landfill market. After all, the basic purpose of these machines is simply to increase the density of the landfill and thereby extend its life. And it must be remembered that most of Al-Jon’s compactors are not going to the superlandfills of the privates; they are going to municipalities. And that means that municipalities are heavily investing in their landfills - perhaps in preference to investing in increased recycling.

Balefills

Moreover, landfill compactors are not the only tools intended to make landfills even more cost-effective. Modern balers are making it possible to create "balefills" - landfills literally constructed of bales. All of the waste is compacted into rectangular bales at either the landfill or a transfer station and then placed into the landfills in rows.

Richard Harris, director of sales for Sierra International Machinery in Bakersfield, CA, points out the advantages. "First, baling is the most efficient way of densifying the material to be landfilled. Everything is automatically set, so it’s not left up to a compactor driver to decide when that day’s MSW is compacted. Also, it’s easier to put in lines for leachate control and gas collection in the straight lines between the rows of bales. And it’s good neighbor relations: The bales are compacted within an enclosed baler, often before they even get to the landfill. Thus, there is no wind control problem, no mess, and fewer trucks. And finally, the landfill operator knows exactly what weight has been processed so he will have concrete data for diversion calculations."

Jagou agrees. In fact, he estimates, between 20% and 25% of all new landfills in this country now are balefills. And he points to large ones. In Bristol, VA, bales of MSW are being placed in a rock quarry 300 ft. deep, allowing 30 years of disposal there. The operator simply stacks the bales 4 ft. high in rows. When he finishes a row, he simply goes back and repeats the process until that layer of the declivity is filled.

Other balefills are being "built" above grade on a flat ground, creating pyramids of bales that are geometrically placed for stability. When the pyramid (which can be hundreds of feet long) is complete, the top and sides are capped in accordance with Subtitle D. Vegetation can be grown in topsoil placed on the cap, so what might have been a landfill eyesore is instead an attractive hill.

Long Haul

Landfills of all types are becoming very difficult to site close to urban centers, and Maguin believes this situation will be permanent. "Particularly as urban areas spread out, so will the NIMBY [Not In My Backyard] effect, so site permitting there will become more difficult and more expensive. Hence, it will become more and more environmentally and economically advantageous to site new landfills away from these communities. Therefore, as today’s urban landfills fill up, they will be replaced by distant sites that must be fed by long-haul transportation. And I believe much of it will go by rail.

"Actually, the decision whether to long haul by rail is a no-brainer. You use rail when the landfill location exceeds a certain distance away. We’ve learned that you don’t have to locate the transfer station at a railhead even though that would be more cost-effective. You simply recalculate the break-even distance for rail haul. If you have real siting challenges, you just spend more money."

Carl Winans of SSI Compaction Systems, a division of SSI Shredding Systems Inc. in Wilsonville, OR, emphatically agrees, and with adequate volume he sets the distance where rail haul is more economical than truck at 125-150 mi. Since rail transport precludes hauls over highways with regulatory weight limits, an intermodal system provides flexibility for payloads that are only limited by the weight capacity of the railcar, he explains.

"Because of the greater payloads possible with rail and the longer distances now being proposed, intermodal rail haul of MSW is a viable choice," he adds. "Since the basis of long-haul shipping costs is by a unit move (i.e., it costs a certain amount to make a trip whether the train is empty or loaded), ultimate efficiency can be achieved when the train and its cars are loaded to their maximum weight capacity. With rail, waste can be moved farther, less expensively, and without adding to the traffic on overburdened roads."

The problem is that Winans expressed those views a year ago, and while he still believes them today, he concedes that the use of rail haul for MSW has not expanded nearly as quickly as he thought it would. Trucks today, including trucks as part of an intermodal system also involving barge and/or rail, are far more widely used than rail even though long-haul trucking is regulated by highway weight limitations, which reduce the payload and thereby increase costs.

"SSI’s approach to this limitation is to maximize the allowable truck load through the use of a preload, intermodal compaction system at the transfer station," Winans says. "This self-contained compaction system compresses the MSW into preformed, untied bales within its compression chamber, independent of the transport vehicle. With this system, haulers can customize payloads for their hauling equipment to achieve maximum weight loads that meet the limits of the state with the most stringent regulations on their route. Since these untied bales bear no compaction force against the container sidewalls or roof, haulers can use lighter-weight transport equipment to attain greater legal payloads. Moreover, the compactor’s control system also determines the load’s weight balance point and places it in the trailer to provide proper axle-weight distribution to permit the hauler to get the last legal pound of payload."

Conversely, Sierra’s Harris thinks tied bales offer the most flexibility for use on flatbed trucks and railcars alike. "Large national companies want this flexibility so they can wrap the bales in shrink-wrap and use any flatbed vehicle, whether truck, rail, or barge. This enables them to ship long distances, including through local neighborhoods, by whatever transportation is most convenient. If the truck leg of the haul has highway weight limitations, you just limit the number of bales you put on each truck and use a few more trucks. And when the long haul is complete, of course, you have a product ready to go into a balefill."

Either way, some source of compaction is needed to minimize long-haul costs. Harris claims that Sierra balers can process 500 tpd at a cost of less than $3/ton. Thus, New York City’s long-haul solution to its Fresh Kills closure dilemma may prove to be cost-effective. If, as Mayor Giuliani proposes, a transfer station is located in each borough, MSW trains may roll out of the city as routinely as commuter trains.

Prospects for Recycling

Unquestionably, the landfill industry has earned its cost advantage over other types of MSW disposal. Moreover, as Hauser points out, modern sanitary landfills have an excellent track record because of well-planned and well-executed siting, design, operation, and monitoring. While regulation certainly has played a major role in achieving this track record, it still must be conceded that these landfills have caused few problems in the current disposal of large amounts of waste.

Current disposal, however, is only one aspect of the disposal picture, asserts John Glaub, director of waste processing for Norcal Waste Systems in San Francisco, CA. "Even though it is cheaper to bury our waste in landfills, as a matter of public policy, we want to manage these materials in the most environmentally sound manner for the future as well as the present. That public policy has a cost attached to it, of course, but it is analogous to investing in a wastewater treatment plant rather than directly discharging our sewage into our oceans, lakes, or rivers. Besides, are the costs of recycling too onerous for our residents? Here in the Bay Area, our complete refuse service costs each homeowner just $16 per month, whereas that homeowner is probably spending several times that much for such elective utilities as cable and telephone options."

Even so, the recycling industry understands that it must at least reduce the huge cost advantages landfills enjoy today. And the two areas of improvement that would have the greatest impact are (1) reducing the cost of collecting and processing recyclables and (2) expanding and stabilizing markets for recyclables.

Cost Reduction

Major cost reductions in the collection and processing of recyclables will not be easy. Hauser believes the recycling industry today is in just an incremental-improvement mode. The technologies are getting better, he thinks, but no massive changes are in sight.

Perhaps the most promising improvement coming onto the scene is the trend toward single-stream collection and processing of unsorted recyclables. Large cities like Los Angeles and San Francisco have changed their methods to sharply reduce their curbside-collection costs. Los Angeles has already achieved this by using automated sideloading vehicles throughout its fleet to pick up three different bins: one containing trash, one containing yardwaste, and one containing commingled containers and paper. (San Francisco is in the process of implementing a slightly different collection system, using two-compartment trucks to pick up trash and recyclables and a conventional truck to pick up yardwaste and foodwaste.)

The collection economies are certainly significant. Daniel Hackney of the City of Los Angeles Bureau of Sanitation notes, "Operationally, we have realized savings from avoided landfill tipping charges, from flexibility and maintenance economies from our fleet commonality, and from labor savings achieved through attrition as the more efficient one-man truck operations allow us to eliminate surplus positions. All in all, we have been able to achieve a 25% reduction in collection costs despite recycling 140% more than we did before."

However, there is a "cost" for these savings in the form of more complicated and time-consuming processing at the MRF. Department of Sanitation Project Manager Antoine Raphael reports that the MRF contractors’ cost of sorting went up 20% to as much as $75/ton when they first converted to single-stream operations. Part of the cost increase was caused by the new requirement to separate paper from containers, a time-consuming task when performed manually. One of these contractors, Leonard Lang of Sun Valley Paper Stock, recalls that he needed only 25 employees until he started processing single stream. Then he needed 65 temporary workers to augment a permanent staff of 20.

Gradually, however, such costs come down when MRF operators train their crews and invest in mechanical single-stream sorting equipment. Companies including Bollegraaf, Bulk Handling Systems, and CP Manufacturing have developed such sorting systems to minimize the time and cost of processing recyclables.

City Fibers, one of the Los Angeles MRF contractors, installed a Bollegraaf single-stream system to process its share of the recyclables collected by Los Angeles’ new collection system. As described by Wilfred Poiesz of Van Dyk Baler in Stamford, CT, the United States distributor for Bollegraaf, the 25-tph system enables City Fibers to efficiently separate the stream of recyclables into the homogeneous fractions of old corrugated cardboard, newspaper, other paper, glass and plastic containers, ferrous metals, and aluminum cans.

"The key is the automation of the otherwise difficult and time-consuming process of separating the paper from the containers, and the newspaper from the other paper," Poiesz points out. "This system uses our Star Screen mechanism to accomplish that. After a picking crew removes the large cardboard and waste, the remaining material goes over a system of two Star Screen beds arranged at steep-incline angles. The newspaper passes over the screens while the mixed paper, fines, and the containers fall back and through the screen and are conveyed to a separator screen. This unit automatically bounces the containers down and to the sides. All fiber, such as high-grade paper and junk mail, adheres to this screen until it reaches the top of the screen to a conveyor where it is manually inspected.

"The containers move on for further separation. Magnets automatically remove the steel cans and other ferrous metal. An eddy-current machine automatically ejects the aluminum cans, and glass and plastics are manually sorted into colors and types. Each of the separated materials drops into the storage bunker for that material and the bunker contents are then automatically conveyed to a Van Dyk baler."

Although today’s single-stream systems are essentially mechanical sorters, they do feature an increasing amount of automation, both to cut labor costs and to ensure that the increasingly complex systems remain coordinated and run smoothly. For example, the speed of conveyors is controlled by industrial PCs. Incoming loads on the conveyor can be scanned by an infrared sensor, and depending on the makeup of the load, the computer will slow down or speed up the conveyor as needed. On the other end, a computer programmed to know when a bunker is about to be full of recyclables will cause that bunker’s contents to be conveyed to the baler where the baler computer will sequence it for baling of that type of recyclable.

Today’s systems also have diagnostic capability. Thermal-overload sensors signal the existence and location of any overheating condition to a computer that automatically shuts down the problem area (and everything upstream of it). The computer also highlights the problem area on a display panel and, through an interactive program, allows an operator to quickly diagnose and repair the problem. Not only does this diagnostic capability protect the system from damage, it also maximizes the uptime and throughput of the system.

According to Poiesz, Bollegraaf single-stream systems (and presumably competitive systems as well) typically have a throughput of 20-30 tph (for a $2-million single-line configuration) and a productivity of a ton per man-hour. Thus, that 25-employee crew needed to process a commingled stream of recyclables can now process a like amount of single-stream recyclables, thereby preserving much of the savings from single-stream collection.

San Francisco has become the first major US city to offer curbside recycling of all uneaten edibles from residents as well as foodwaste from restaurants. Residents place the foodwaste in a bin with their yardwaste, and it is collected and sent to a Norcal composting facility in nearby Vacaville. According to Chris Choate, compost manager for the Norcal facility, the 70 tpd of waste from San Francisco is mixed with a like amount of yardwaste and straw from neighboring communities. The mixture is ground up and put into an Ag Bag in-vessel composter hooked up to two pipes that aerate the mixture for two months. The compost is then cured for another month, after which it is screened and sold in bulk form.

"Our customers take all the compost we can produce," Choate says. "They say that the only problem is that we don’t make enough of it. That will change soon, though. John Glaub projects that when the San Francisco collection program is fully ramped up, they’ll be sending us 260 tpd of foodwaste! We’re now in the process of doubling our paved concrete area, and we’ll triple the number of Ag Bags to 75. We haven’t had any real processing problems yet, and we don’t foresee any as we expand."

Yes, but can he sell three times as much compost? In Florida, Hauser reports, there is such a glut of compost and mulch that composters can’t give it away. And Florida allows greenwaste to be used for WTE fuel and landfill cover. "You can expand the market somewhat," he concedes, "but you have to co-compost or otherwise increase costs to do it."

Growing the Markets

There are isolated signs that markets for recyclables can be expanded and therefore stabilized somewhat. One way is through new products that can use waste products in their manufacture. A good case in point is the Trex Company of Winchester, VA, a manufacturer of decking material that it claims is a "splinter-free, alternative decking lumber that never needs protective sealants."

Of particular interest is the fact that Trex makes its decking from 50% woodwaste and 50% polyethylene film - principally from those plastic grocery sacks that MRF operators hate because they fly around or jam the machinery.

What’s more, Trex can’t get enough of these plastic grocery sacks. According to Director of Material Mike Vatuna, this growing company already uses 90,000 tons of these bags and other polyethylene film each year. Not only does the company pay $60-$80/ton for these bags, it pays the freight charges too. Even so, to get the bags Trex needs, Vatuna employs buyers who go into an area, contact potential sources, and attempt to build an infrastructure for future supplies. This is backed by an advertising program on the company’s Web site that rivals the advertising of its decking. "We’re always looking for new sources," Vatuna emphasizes. "We want to get those bags before they get into the landfill."

Another approach to growing the market is to convince manufacturers to use recycled materials in lieu of or in addition to virgin sources. This has been very successful with aluminum cans, and another case in point is the effort of the Carpco Division of Outokumpu Technology Inc. in Jacksonville, FL, to induce bottlers of soft drinks to make greater use of PET resins reclaimed from recycled soft-drink bottles. "The problem has been that resins from the PVC caps and neck rings of soft-drink bottles have contaminated the PET resins from the rest of the bottle," explains Patrick Kerscher, Carpco’s manager for resource recovery. "Because this causes chloride fumes, discoloration, and altered viscosity, the bottling industry has established a rigid standard: Recycled PET can contain no more than 30 ppm of PVC if it is to be used in new bottles.

"That’s not an impossible standard anymore. Our V-Stat electrostatic separator now produces clean PET plastic flake that contains less than 10 ppm of PVC contaminants with only 3-5% losses. And PETCORE, Europe’s PET container recycling organization, has confirmed that the quality of the recycled resin is very high. What’s even more important, though, is that Coca Cola just announced that 25% of its production will now have at least a 10% recycled-resin content. That’s a lot of recycled bottles."

Now Carpco is addressing the market opportunity for the new plastic beer bottles. Although still mainly in the pilot stage, plastic beer bottles could represent a huge market for recycled PET bottles.

"In this case, the major bottle manufacturers have looked into recycling technology before full market release of the new plastic beer bottles," Kerscher says. "It was important to them to see that we could effectively and efficiently recycle and separate these materials. One major concern was whether we could separate the oxygen barrier - a nylon film on the inside of the bottle that will allow beer retailers to store products for up to seven months (comparable to that of beer contained in glass bottles and aluminum cans). Well, we’ve shown that we can do that separation, and we think that should allay one of the concerns brewers have about offering their beer in plastic bottles. Particularly with the price of virgin resins increasing as oil prices go higher, this represents a great new potential market for recycled plastic."

Admittedly, these are simply anecdotal indicators, but they do illustrate that there are opportunities to improve efficiency, lower costs, impact and create markets, and provide more and better service. Since overall this country seems to have a social commitment to recycling, such opportunities will continue to be uncovered and exploited.

Charles D. Bader is with Dateline II Communications in Los Angeles, CA.

MSW
Elements 2001