Re: (All) Waste Prevention Technology

[Ralph Cooper <rec3@po.cwru.edu>]

At 11:38 AM 01/12/1998 -0500, you wrote:
>Callahan, Mike wrote:
>> 
>> I'll throw in my two cents,
>> 
>> No technology "prevents" waste unless you limit your discussion to a
>> specific waste you are trying to prevent.  Powder coatings eliminate
>> solvent fumes and liquid wastes but they create dust and solid waste.
>> Solvent coatings can be air dried while powder coatings must be heated
>> to effect cure.  Powder coatings also require a much cleaner surface so
>> that cleaning wastes may be greater.
>> 
>> Every change has its trade-offs of benefits and disadvantages.  If we
>> could sum them all up and establish one numeric rating of "pollution",
>> then we could determine if a given technology actually prevented
>> pollution compared to another for a given unit of production.
>> 
>> Since there is no easy indicator, industry relys on the costs society
>> places on each raw material and waste stream.  In Europe at the turn of
>> the century, raw materials were scarce and labor was cheap.  That's why
>> so many inventions focused on ways to save material.  In the US, the
>> opposite was true.  Most inventions were labor saving devices because
>> labor was scarce.
>> 
>> Given a certain set of raw material, labor, energy, and disposal costs,
>> an engineer will seek out the optimum mix (i.e., the lowest cost per
>> unit of production).  Many of the P2 successes we are now finding are
>> not so much due to any new technology but are a response to changing
>> constraints and costs.  As waste treatment and disposal costs increase,
>> the optimum setting may allow for more usage of labor and/or energy to
>> offset these increased costs.
>> 
>> Just a few thoughts,
>> 
>> Mike.callahan@jacobs.com
>
>As for my two cents:
>
>Your exactly right.  The artificially cheap inputs from subsidized
>primary extractive industry send the price signal that material
>throughput is cheap.  The "four horsemen" of primary extractive
>industry, mining, petroleum, agriculture and forest products, send 
>more and more material more and more quickly down the chute to
>primary manufacturers.  (And quickly to landfills.)  This is the
>imperative of GNP!  
>
>On the other side of that "bridge to the 21st century" Clinton keeps
>talking about, however, lies a world in which economic health can
>no longer be a function of how quickly we can consume our natural
>capital.  We need to focus attention on clearly attaching price
>signals, and incentives, to replacing both mass and energy with
>information and intelligence: thus P2!
>
>Adam Davis
>Waste Management, Inc.
>adavis@hooked.net
>
>
I think you are both absolutely wrong.  Many people in industry realize
that they live in this world too and are looking for ways to reduce the
adverse impact of their activity on the world.  This includes efficiency in
waste, risk, materials consumption and labor.  In a "down-sizing" oriented
economy, this is a way to survival as a company and as an individual, as
well as, as a society.

In ten years of work in what we used to call waste minimization and later
called P2, I never met a front-line engineer who was not interested in
reducing the waste produced by his/her operation, in increasing energy or
materials efficiency, or in improving the product with the same inputs and
fewer waste outputs.  Some had been burned by management refusal to
consider investment in the engineering or capital that would be required
(sometimes known as milking the cash cow until it dies); but none were
opposed to doing what they could within their job description to make their
operation more efficient.

Also during those same years, I had much success in getting plants and
companies to implement true pollution prevention, including materials
efficiency, recycling, energy efficiency, risk reduction, etc. 

The largest barrier I encountered was EPA and their definition of pollution
prevention.  One client discovered a way to make a critical chemical at the
point of use, instead of in a large dedicated plant.  Since the material
was hazardous to transport and handle, and became contaminated and unusable
fairly easily, the change would reduce pollution greatly, on a company wide
and world wide basis.  However, the amount of waste produced in the plant
that used the chemical would increase slightly.  EPA's response was that
this could not be considered waste minimization or pollution prevention,
because there would be an increase in one location, regardless that there
was a larger decrease in the total.  What eventually swayed the company was
the opportunity to eliminate the risk of a significant transportation or
storage release of a highly toxic chemical, but EPA's response was of no
help in getting it done.


  
Ralph E. Cooper, Ph.D.
CWRU School of Law
J.D. Class of 1999
rec3@po.cwru.edu
(216) 991-6837 (Thursdays and Fridays only)