RE: (All) Waste Prevention Technology

["Callahan, Mike" <Mike.Callahan@jacobs.com>]

Ralph,

I find it interesting that you claim I am "absolutely wrong" and then go
on to prove my point.  When management refuses to fund a process
improvement it is because the value of that money is viewed as being
worth more than the total benefit derived from the change.

As a chemical engineer in a major A/E firm, I would love it if everyone
retrofitted and upgraded their plants every few years to use the
greatest and latest technology to avoid waste.  But that is not
practical.  New technologies represent new risks.

Except for the electonics industry, most industries improve their
operation in a stair-case pattern.  Plants make do with what they have
unless they need to produce a new product or debottleneck production
capacity.  And then one day, either the technology changes so much or
the external conditions change so much that management can now justify a
large capital expenditure to upgrade or replace the plant.  This new
plant establishes a new operating point and it hopefully balances all
external factors to achieve an optimum design.

Every project has trade-offs, like it or not.  Even something as simple
as a flow control valve on a rinse tank. Why do some plants continue to
use free running rinses ? Because the production line supervisor may
have been chewed out by management for generating one batch of rejects 5
years ago.  Management didn't see the value in saving water day after
day and the supervisor swore he would never get chewed out again for
trying to save a little water.  Until an outsider comes along and points
out that this water is costing big $, and management instucts the
supervisor to make the change, the status quo will remain.

P2 succeeds because what was optimal regarding waste generation a few
years ago may not be optimal now.  The same goes for energy, raw
materials, labor, etc.  Your example regarding the USEPA shows the
importance of LCA's.  That allowing sub-optimum conditions to exist at
one point in the process may yield far greater benefits elsewhere.  This
just shows how important it is as to where you draw your process
boundary.

Regards,
Mike.callahan@jacobs.com 
> ----------
> From: 	Ralph Cooper[SMTP:rec3@po.cwru.edu]
> Sent: 	Monday, January 12, 1998 10:41AM
> To: 	p2tech@great-lakes.net
> Subject: 	Re: (All) Waste Prevention Technology
> 
> 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)
> 
>