MSW Management | Air Force Stresses ABCs of Recycling

Awareness, benefits, and cooperative marketing are basic components to award-winning, revenue-producing recycling programs at Texas-based training facilities.

By Carol Wasson

Sidebar

The Central Texas Reycling Association: An Inside Look

Every year, federal employees from across the United States gather in Washington, DC, to accept White House "Closing the Circle" Awards for their outstanding environmental stewardship work. In 2003, a unique recycling education and outreach program within the Air Education and Training Command (AETC) bases in the Air Force was honored for its success in meeting diversion rate goals while also achieving profitability. As most know, federal agencies were required (in a 1998 Executive Order 13101) to set up specific solid waste reduction/recycling goals. The Department of Defense (DoD) mandated that a 40% diversion rate be achieved by 2005. Also, solid waste programs were charged to attain economic benefits as opposed to the costs incurred in using landfills or incineration alone.

"With budget and manpower shortages, these goals would be difficult to reach," says Michael Redfern, an environmental program manager for 13 AETC bases in the South. His team began working on a "break-even or better" recycling policy for AETC at a time when the recycling program was losing more than $250,000 per year and the solid waste diversion rate was below 20%. The team conducted a thorough review of all aspects of the recycling and composting operations and developed new plans for each facility. Through concerted awareness efforts and cooperative marketing agreements, the AETC recycling program (in 2002) generated more than $2.4 million, earned almost $1 million in sales, and reached a 38% diversion rate.

The AETC program's basic components are what Redfern dubs "the ABCs of recycling." He outlines it this way:

Three Texas-based AETC facilities - Randolph, Laughlin, and Lackland Air Force Bases - became the first federal installations ever to enter into a cooperative partnership managed by a public recycling group. "To say this program is a success is an understatement," says Redfern. Randolph and Laughlin Air Force Bases were the first installations to prove that a cooperative partnership works, netting $77,000 after 14 months - a 400% increase in revenue. Both bases joined in a sales agreement with Central Texas Recycling Association, the only non-profit cooperative recycling marketing group in the nation. Lackland Air Force Base (AFB) joined shortly thereafter with other AETC installations considering the partnership as well, reports the AETC Public Affairs Office.

The Central Texas Recycling Association (CTRA) consists of nearly 50 rural recycling cooperatives representing more than 500 public, private, and non-profit entities. "They sell our materials and negotiate prices directly with manufacturers who will convert the materials into usable products and will arrange low-cost transportation," says Redfern. CTRA charges 10% of the sales revenue it generates for AETC. When the association begins to break even or make a profit, the percentage charged decreases. Redfern describes the program as being similar to a farmer's cooperative program. In other words, 10 small farmers' crops are more attractive to a big buyer than one small crop. It's more cost-effective to ship, and the buyers can anticipate a steady quantity on a regular basis. Contract processes fluctuate based on the market value established monthly in The Recycling Manager, an independent agency that proves recyclable material market process. "It's similar to the Chicago Board of Trade commodity pricing, but the CTRA sales agreement guarantees floor prices," says Redfern. "For example, we have a floor price of $60 per ton on cardboard. If the market drops below that, we are still guaranteed $60. When it's higher, we earn up to 85% of the market price," he says.

Redfern says that at Randolph AFB, for instance, 2,500 tons of recycled material netted an average gain of $17 per ton. Net profits reflected an average of $49 per ton in revenue, plus a cost savings of $48 per ton for landfill charges, minus $80 per ton for recycling charges. "Before the partnership, we couldn't find buyers to pay market value for recyclable items. We gave many materials away just to keep them out of landfills. Now CTRA keeps track of the tonnage processed and calculates the amount of resources an agency saves by recycling," he says. CTRA and Redfern are spreading the word to other DoD organizations and federal agencies in other states. "It just makes good business sense and saves agencies hundreds of hours of work negotiating individual sales agreements with multiple buyers," says Redfern.

AETC bases in Texas experienced a tripling of their revenue after joining CTRA. They have also benefited from partnering with CTRA in the relief of non-core manpower functions such as bill collection. AETC bases have revolutionized their recycling practices, and that has led to two awards for CTRA. The bases account for 40% of CTRA's recycling tonnage. Since the inception of the partnership, AETC bases conserved 64,375 trees, 15,535 kilowatt-hours of electricity, and 26,507,600 gallons of water. They prevented 227,208 pounds of air pollution, diverted 11,360 cubic yards of waste from landfills, and saved $378,713 in disposal costs.

Randolph and Laughlin AFB, along with Goodwill Industries of San Antonio, TX, and CTRA, garnered the Texas Environmental Excellence State Recycling Partnership Award for their success. The award recognizes a partnership that excels in supporting the state's recycling mission and promotes innovative and creative ways of enhancing recycling.

San Antonio's Lackland AFB boasts a population of more than 15,000 military personnel and 6,000 civilians. Known as the "gateway to the Air Force," the base provides basic military training for all enlisted Air Force and Air Reserve component members. "Its challenge is to collect as much recyclable material as possible with its limited manpower and funds, so they are highly proactive in their awareness programs, more so than any other base," says Redfern. "Also, Lackland is always willing to consider new ideas - instead of coming up with just one plan that they must stick to. A lack of flexibility is a common problem within many recycling programs," he says.

Jesse Salinas is the Chief of Recycling at Lackland AFB. He manages the recycling center and its crew of seven people. "We took a program that was probably processing only 450,000 pounds per year; and now we average more than 600,000 pounds per month of total commodities," says Salinas, adding that during the past year, the program has kept more than 7 million pounds of recyclable material from hitting the landfill. Salinas shares some averages as to commodities Lackland recycles per quarter:

"Our strength lies in our operations. We've made things more mobile so that we can be lean, mean, and fast," says Salinas. Comparing it to the little guys in basketball who can dribble around the big guys, Salinas explains that they abandoned bulky trucks for customized trailers. "In order to empty a bin at a building, you had to have a forklift and a large truck. Now we use 16-foot trailers pulled by a pickup truck. We bought 36 trailers and customized them with doors and cages. So we just pull up with an empty trailer, leave it, and take the full trailer back to the recycling center. We have specific trailers for cardboard only and separate bins for paper, plastic, and cans. With a small pickup pulling a trailer, you can get in, out, and around our buildings. We're able to do more with less. For example, our mobile program allows us to recycle cardboard twice a week rather than twice a month," says Salinas. "We go around to all the buildings and say, ŒThis is team Lackland, we're recycling, so give us a hand.' They know when we're coming. If they leave five full bins for us, we leave them five empty ones - so there is never a time when it is not convenient to recycle."

To get cooperation, Salinas says the program focuses on education. "We're selling the kids on the program and they're going home and telling Mom and Dad to recycle. In fact, a lot of the kids volunteer for us," he says, stressing that he believes in old-school public relations to boost his program. When AETC's Redfern isn't on the base as the superhero Michael Recycle, Salinas fills in with a fun, story-telling cowboy character. "We make recycling cool, and we give out bags and T-shirts made from recycled plastic and cotton," he says. "We also do barbecues for the kids, and we recycle at all the big events on base. We make ourselves really visible, and long as we keep doing that, they keep recycling," he says.

As to recycle processing equipment, the base employs ingenuity. "Our cardboard baler was a piece of equipment that was soon to be sent from another base to the junkyard. We got it, and in essence, we recycled it as well," says Salinas. "Through my networking contacts at various recycling conferences, I was able to find someone with the actual blueprints to the baler. With those in hand, we were able to rewire and refurbish it. Now that old, recycled baler makes us about $10,000 per month," he says.

Another innovation is the recycling center's brass safety certification unit. Two sergeants within the 37th Training Group recommended the purchase of a custom-made machine that can sort the nearly 300,000 pounds of brass casings used annually and can also certify the casings as safe. The previous process was to hand-sort them for live rounds and then package and deliver them to the local Defense Reutilization and Marketing Office for resale to the public at about $0.50 per pound. A nagging problem was that no money was coming back to the wing. Also there had to be a better way to process all that brass and make it safe. With the human factor, it was difficult to guarantee that shipments were 100% safe. The new sorting machine destroys the volatility of the powder charge and primers associated with live ammunition by processing the rounds through a 2,400° rotating hopper. The unit is armored to withstand up to .50 caliber ammunition detonations. The machine's purchase was justified through a program called FASCAP, or Request For Fast Payback Capital investment. By showing an annual savings of $107,833, it was calculated that the machine would pay for itself in only 14 months. The money generated from this recycling unit goes into an account for morale, welfare, and recreation programs, while the sergeants who submitted the idea stand to earn a sizeable monetary reward from the Air Force Innovative Development through the Employee Awareness program.

Finally, Lackland AFB has a history of innovation. Nearly a decade ago, the base demonstrated that capability in the handling of large quantities of construction-and-demolition (C&D) debris infused with lead from the demolition of aging buildings containing lead-based paint. Lackland AFB formed a pollution prevention partnership with the Texas Natural Resource Conservation Commission and two contracting companies. The partnership hit upon the idea of grinding the C&D debris prior to TCLP analysis and disposal. While pre-demolition lead levels ranged from 52 to 32,884 parts per million, TCLP analysis of composite samples from the grindings revealed lead levels of approximately 0.14 parts per million - well below the 5parts per million lead cutoff point for defining hazardous waste. That designated the material as special waste instead, resulting in landfill tipping fees of $75 per cubic yard compared to the $385-percubic yard tipping fee for hazardous waste landfills. The estimated cost to dispose of the separated lead-based paint components and both buildings without grinding was $28,875, while disposal costs after grinding both buildings was only $3,125 - a savings of more than $25,000.

"Finally, our AETC bases have a more all-encompassing purpose - to serve surrounding populations and to be good neighbors," says Redfern. "Often our program is the only game in town, so area residents can bring their recyclables to us and we can sell them. It's no surprise that much of the time, our job is being the recycling center for a larger, greater community."

Construction-industry writer Carol Wasson owns JCL Marketing & Communications Inc.