Terrorist activities add a new sense of immediacy to collecting, categorizing, and moving waste.

By John T. Aquino

When Barry McGuire sang the lyrics of Phil Sloan and Steve Barri in 1965 and observed, "Ah, you don't believe we're on the eve of destruction," he was referring largely to social unrest in the United States - riots, hate crimes, antiwar protests. Now, in the wake of terrorist attacks in the US on September 11, 2001, the refrain takes on a new meaning. Every day could be the eve of destruction.

And so the nation has been preparing. There are now national security alerts coded by color as to the severity of the risk. "Every time [Secretary of Homeland Security] Governor [Tom] Ridge moves the national security level up to Code Orange hundreds of thousands of additional dollars are expended by public entities," says Jack Legler, director of trucking security and operations for the American Trucking Association (ATA) in Alexandria, VA, and former executive vice president for the Waste Equipment Technology Association in Washington, DC. These expenditures have put great pressure on state and local budgets. The preparations themselves have changed the mood of the country. Has security pushed environmentalism further and further away as a policy issue? How will security concerns affect material recovery facilities (MRFs) and transfer stations - in both how security costs affect municipal budgets and how resource recovery is viewed in importance. How can these types of facilities stay viable?

And even if security issues and concerns are taken out of the equation, many state budgets are in deficit for other reasons. State and local programs are being cut back. How can MRFs and transfer stations remain viable?

Security, Jitters, and Budgets

"Budgets are tight," says Peter Grogan, manager of market development for Weyerhaeuser in Federal Way, WA. "You hear stories of municipalities being told to unscrew every third light bulb to save electricity. Sheriffs had a press conference complaining that they were forced to let prisoners get out early for cost reasons. Recycling is not a sacred cow. It's at risk.

"A few years ago, 94 municipalities went into recycling, and then the business froze and some got out. We are concerned that the demand for materials is growing at a phenomenal rate, thanks partly to new mills in China, and now there is a risk that the supply of paper material to be recycled will be affected by budget deficiencies. The City of Denver has a $52 million deficit, and they are questioning whether or not they will continue to collect recyclables from residences. Weyerhaeuser receives 15 million tons per month of newsprint from Denver residences, and we would like Denver to stay the course. And this is happening all over. Some of it is perhaps part of a business cycle, some of it is security-cost­related, and some of it is mood-related because of security concerns. But it comes out to shortfalls and cuts."

"Right now security is a big consideration for all public entities," says Legler. "It's slipped off the front burner for the moment as the US has felt more secure about terrorism in the US as time has gone by since 9/11. But on the environmental policy side, security is right up there as an issue. And there is a cost."

If nothing else, security concerns have affected the mood and perhaps the costs of solid waste operations. Soon after the September 11 attacks and the concurrent deaths of individuals by anthrax-contaminated letters in Washington, DC, and in Florida, the perpetrator of which is still unknown, the Solid Waste Association of North America issued guidance for solid waste workers on handling wastes potentially contaminated with anthrax. Two years later, lacking further attacks by contaminated objects, the security emphasis for solid waste managers might have shifted. Legler says, "Where this fits into the world of solid waste is that waste facilities are not terrorist targets in themselves but might be perceived by terrorists to be avenues to waste companies' customers. It is likely that soon virtually every place where waste service companies operate will present a security overlay. It is not business as usual, not even for local haulers. And this will be more expensive for waste companies, dealing with background checks, additional time vehicles have to be on the road, and therefore longer hours for MRF and transfer station operations.

"And the thing is," Legler continues, "we haven't gone down the road of what happens when the Œnext thing' happens. How do you deal with waste in a city where everything is contaminated? If you have a citywide quarantine, is every piece of waste a biohazard? Do you shut down the MRF or the transfer station for fear of what may have been brought to it? Do the trucks come out of the city at all? Do they have to be decontaminated?"

Jeremy O'Brien, SWANA's director of applied research, says there have been discussions about using waste-to-energy facilities to process bioterrorism waste.

"As I said," repeats Legler, "it's no longer business as usual."

Legislative Issues

It's unlikely that solid waste management will be affected one way or the other by agency regulations or state legislation in the near future. "It's quiet," remarks Chaz Miller, director of state programs for the National Solid Wastes Management Association (NSWMA). "I don't think environmentalism is dead. But it's clear that solid waste issues are not on the front burner. Security is a big issue. And there are more pressing environmental issues, such as air and water and policy issues associated with global warming.

"Legislatively I don't see anything in the offer that will have any major effect on processing one way or another. Clearly safety is an issue. And [the Occupational Safety and Health Administration's] ergonomic rules will have an impact on processing. How much remains to be seen. What OSHA has already released for grocery stories and poultry processing shows that OSHA is clearly concerned with lifting and with basic manufacturing operations. MRFs, with their picking lines, are manufacturing operations. When OSHA releases its ergonomic rules for the solid waste industry, I don't think it will be a bad one, but it is something that recyclers will have to be prepared for.

"There are siting issues associated with MRFs. We're seeing more and more. People have an aversion to being near anything industrial," Miller continues.

"Legislatively, NSWMA has tracked over 1,021 bills this year that are directly related to solid waste and recycling industries. Of these bills, nine were vetoed, 144 were enacted, and the rest either died or are in state legislatures that have not yet adjourned. The enacted bills cover a wide array of subjects - none earthshaking, mostly tweaks and fixes to existing laws. The most substantial are the Maine and Minnesota disposal bans on [cathode ray tubes]. Overall this activity is down from previous years. So there's less attention to solid waste issues legislatively, which can be good and bad," he points out.

One Last Recycling Chance

As the state and local governments have faced budget crises, ways to make recycling more cost-efficient have become increasingly prominent through partnerships and an integrated solid waste management approach. SWANA's O'Brien says, "As for MRFs and transfer stations, there has certainly been a move for out-of-region disposal of waste, which has resulted in more and more transfer stations and more and more consideration of having recycling and recovery operations at a MRF and transfer station to serve as a last chance to reduce the amount of waste going to a landfill."

An example of this is the transfer station of the Eastern Band of Cherokees in Cherokee, NC. When the tribe closed its landfill and began construction of a transfer station next to the old landfill - since it owned the property and it was large enough - it found that neighboring Swain and Jackson Counties were searching for new disposal options. Both counties agreed to contribute funds to transfer station planning activities, and the tribe also formed partnerships with Indian Health Service and state agencies. Ultimately Swain County decided to use the tribe's transfer station; Jackson County opted to partner with another county to build a landfill but later entered into a partnership to bring some of its waste to the tribe's transfer station. The tribe uses the Cherokee Boys Club Inc., a tribal trucking company, to haul waste to the landfill. The transfer station can handle 300 tpd and is open seven days a week during the summer. During the winter, it is closed to the general public some days but continues to accept trash from regular haulers. The tribe offers tribal members free door-to-door pickup once a week. Tribal businesses receive free pickup on a daily basis. The tribe also collects recyclables from residents and businesses for free. Tribal members can even call for free white-goods pickup service. The tribe decided to subsidize collection services to discourage residents from dumping illegally.

Various sorting machines

The tribe also chose to collocate composting and recycling operations with the transfer station. Collocation helps the tribe track source-reduction and waste-generation rates. By weighing each incoming waste load and each outgoing waste load, recyclable materials, and organic materials destined for composting, the tribe calculates material diversion rates achieved through recycling and composting.

Calvin Murphy, executive director of tribal utilities, says, "We've had our composting and recycling operations at the transfer station from day one, and we've been doing it for three reasons. First, it saves us money in transporting the [distance] from the station - the less there is, the less it costs. Second, it saves us tipping fees - the less there is, the less it costs. And third, the recyclables we pull out increase our revenues. We have voluntary recycling, but all the tribal businesses recycle. And we pull out all sorts of things - all the wood products, which we use or sell, and even propane tanks, which we get because we're in a tourist area. So we don't make money recycling, but we save it three different ways."

Single-Stream Recycling

Another suddenly prominent, cost-efficient approach for recyclables is single-stream recycling. This involves separating all recyclables from MSW into a single compartment of a collection truck, which allows for compaction, optimizes payloads, and reduces costs. Detractors of the approach note the possibility of paper-stream contamination from glass, plastics, and metal.

"SWANA is completing a research study on single-stream recycling," reports O'Brien, "and it's clear there has been a definite trend toward it in the solid waste industry, especially by larger processors, like Waste Management Inc. [in Houston, Texas]. The figures we've seen show a significant increase in the percentage of MRF processing capacity devoted to single-stream recycling. In 1995, there were five single-stream MRFs, and in 2000 there were 64. And those 64 single-stream recycling MRFs represented 20% of the MRF processing capacity, so clearly larger processing facilities have been converting to single stream."

According to a December 2002 report by the New York City task force on the city's recycling policy, nearly 100 cities in the US, including San Francisco, CA, and St. Paul, MN, have moved their recycling collection systems from source separated to single stream in order to achieve higher collection efficiencies. New York City is said to be considering single stream.

"The big push toward single-stream recycling has come from the private waste sector," points out O'Brien. "The big reason has been to keep collection costs down, with a large commitment to automated collection of recyclables. On the public-sector side alone, if a county wants to go single stream, the county has to invest in a single-stream MRF, and the municipality reaps the benefit of lower collection costs. This has been one of the holdups in single-stream recycling for the public sector because there does not appear to be any sharing of benefits between county and municipality, and these MRFs require a higher initial capital cost." Consequently, O'Brien notes, governments and private companies form public/private partnerships.

Recycle Central/Norcal Waste Systems facility

Recycle Central, billed as "the most modern recycling facility in the United States," officially opened in San Francisco on March 3, 2003, in a ceremony featuring San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown and Norcal Waste Systems Inc. President Mike Sangiacomo. Residents place paper, bottles, and cans together in a blue cart, and the separation is done at the 200,000-ft. ² facility. Eighty percent of all material is delivered by Norcal trucks, the rest by independent contractors. The facility's processing equipment was installed by Enterprise Co. of Santa Ana, CA, and the balers are Enterprise units. Most of the conveyors were manufactured by Hustler Conveyor Company in St. Charles, MO, and there are two sets of Bulk Handling Systems Inc. (BHS, Eugene, OR) screens to sort newspapers, cans, and bottles. Disc screens send bottles and cans in one direction and float paper in another while further sorting it into independent streams of mixed paper and newsprint. A vacuum system pulls computer paper, envelopes, and letterhead off the conveyor belts and sends them to balers. A magnet pulls steel and tin cans off the sorting belt and puts them into a large storage cage. An eddy-current separator pulls aluminum cans off the belt.

San Francisco's board of supervisors has set a goal of 75% recycling citywide by 2010, and the new facility, by processing its own recyclables, is designed to help achieve the goal.

Single-stream recycling has its detractors. Eureka Recycling in St. Paul, in partnership with the City of St. Paul and the Minnesota Office of Environmental Assistance, completed a study of curbside recycling collection in 2000 and recommended two-stream recycling for the city. "It is important to note," the study concluded, "that in this study the single-stream method did not prove to be cost-effective when compared to other methods. Although single-stream, along with the bi-weekly two-stream bin scenario, resulted in the most inexpensive collection costs, the increased processing costs and decrease in revenue due to material loss made it the most expensive method when looking at the overall system. In addition, the net overall recovery (environmental benefit) in the single-stream method (i.e., materials reaching end-markets) was less than every other tested method when subtracting the residuals from the collected amount."

"The paper industry is mounting a major campaign against single-stream recycling. It's just not the raw material they need," says NSWMA's Miller. "While it is perfectly understandable that they are looking to buying raw material, coming at it from just the supply side means that they are going to have to stop it dead in its tracks. Mixed-paper recycling is inevitable. It's less expensive to collect and process."

"As far as we're concerned, that train has left the station," says Weyerhaeuser's Grogan. "Is single-stream recycling ideal? No. Is it as clean as source separation? No. Like the AF&PA [American Forest & Paper Association], of which Weyerhaeuser is a member, we have concerns about the quality of the material and the glass-shards problem. But look on the West Coast: Phoenix, Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Jose - are all single stream, and Portland and Seattle are modified single-stream, which is to say the glass is kept separate, which we feel is the happy compromise. But we have decided that we won't have an impact in slowing the trend, and so we applaud Portland and others that have gone the modified route, and [we] have made our own contribution to solving the problem through technology."

Robin Baker of the AF&PA in Washington, DC, stresses that the association has not taken a position on single-stream recycling. "Our goal is to increase the amount of higher-quality paper that is recovered, by whatever means. Some single-stream operations have performed well, and others have not. Some dual-stream operations have performed well, and others have not. The goal is to increase the quality of recovered paper and to make sure that it is clean."

The AF&PA announced on May 21, 2003, that it has set a new paper-recovery goal of 55% of all paper consumed in the US by 2012. The previous goal, set in 1995, was 50%, which is expected to be met by the end of 2003, given the increase in domestic consumption of paper and paperboard and the continued growth in the export of recovered fiber, much of it from Asia.

For all of the concerns about single stream versus dual stream, W. Henson Moore, AF&PA president and CEO, notes that more paper is recovered from the MSW stream for recycling (by weight) than all other materials combined. "The paper industry represents an outstanding success story in the progress of national recycling efforts," Moore says.

Recycling Separation Technologies

Los Angeles tested single-bin curbside collection of all recyclables in 1996 with a resulting 148% increase in residential recycled amounts. Trucks ran with fuller loads. Automated, driver-only sideloaders were used, reducing labor costs. But higher processing costs reduced the city's net revenue increase to just 12%.

Over the last seven years, technology has been developed to bring down the processing costs and make recycling in general and single-stream recycling in particular more cost-effective and more efficient.

Weyerhaeuser's system is PaperSort, a high-speed optical sorting system specifically designed to handle, identify, and separate paper grades for recycling. Weyerhaeuser developed it with MSS Inc. of Nashville, TN. It sorts mixed loads of recovered paper into distinct product streams using MultiGrade Sensor technology and a proprietary mechanical system design. The first site for the system was Baltimore in 1999; the second was Denver in 2001. Grogan says he was in Gothenburg, Sweden, early in the year to see the technology being used at the IL Recycling facility there. "The system is fully automated," he states. "Not a single employee touched the paper."

CP Manufacturing in National City, CA, has developed a single-stream separation system for commingled, curbside-collected fiber materials and containers.

BHS has designed a newsprint sorting system that mechanically separates the newsprint from mixed containers. Called the NewSorter, it bulk-sorts the mixed material into smaller, more manageable recovery streams containing similar materials. BHS designed the system for Waste Management Inc. in Ohio in 1996.

National Recovery Technologies Inc. in Nashville, TN, and MSS Inc. have developed automated separation systems for plastic bottles and containers. In January 2003, RRT Design and Construction in Melville, NY, completed the installation of an electronic plastics recycling system for Concurrent Technologies Corporation's DEER2 project in Largo, FL. DEER2 is a US Department of Defense project created to illustrate the best solutions for an environmentally friendly and economically sound recovery of resources from electronic equipment. The system is designed to accept postindustrial and commercial plastics, principally electronic-equipment casings for automated resin separation.

New Age?

Beginning an article with the lyrics from "Eve of Destruction" is an ominous beginning - appropriate given the destruction of 9/11, but ominous just the same. It might be helpful to remember that we weren't on the "eve of destruction" in 1965 when that song was written and that three years later in 1968 people were singing of the "dawning of the age of Aquarius."

The new cost-reducing technologies that are mentioned in this article are what recycling has been looking for since it caught national attention again in the 1980s. Perfect or not, perhaps they can make recycling more viable, steer it through budgetary crises, and indeed move it toward, if not a new age, then at least a newer age.

John T. Aquino is a writer and an attorney based in Washington, DC, and is executive director of TASWER (Tribal Association for Solid Waste and Emergency Response).

MSW - November/December 2003