Recycling is serious business. You probably knew

Transcription

1 the edict of delvecchio: DIVERT As MUCH As POSSIBLE This Pennsylvania hauler, who spent millions to build and equip a recycling/transfer facility, wants to send less to landfills. Recycling is serious business. You probably knew that, but perhaps a look at efforts of Mid-Atlantic Recycling (Dunmore, Pa.), which tries to wring as big a volume of waste diversion out of 1,500 cubic yards each day, will bring the facts home. First, Mid-Atlantic is an arm of DelVecchio Disposal. A growing refuse hauling concern, DelVecchio has a subsidiary that encompasses infectious waste handling, asbestos work, and hazardous waste transportation. With that subsidiary and the 37-person Mid-Atlantic operation, DelVecchio has more than 100 employees. Second, Mid-Atlantic is, basically, a transfer station with an impressive array of recycling technologies grafted onto it. But while the imperative at most transfer stations is to move large amounts of trash somewhere each day while recycling what can be pulled out of a fast-moving waste stream, recycling is the priority here. Mid-Atlantic s plant manager and business manager, Bill Gallagher and Pat Lavelle, say company owner John Del- Vecchio has given them one overriding command: Divert as much as possible from the trailers and flatbeds (with baled trash) headed for landfills. They ve taken him up on the challenge, coming up with new ideas in waste stream diversion... which have required additional investment from the parent company. In all, more than $3.5 million has been spent thus far on construction and equipment for the one-year-old facility, with more on the drawing board already. What has this money bought? Well, the transfer station is equipped with a baler, a compactor, and a tire shredder. It also has an elevated picking station (much like that pictured By JOE SALIMANDO on the July cover of Waste,Age). An interesting feature of the picking station is that its conveyor can feed either a baler or a compactor. In operational terms, this offers flexibility. Pickers sometimes pull recyclables out of loads as they sail by, leaving refuse for disposal. At other times, they pick non-recyclables out of loads made up primarily of paper; the then-cleaned paper sailing to the end of the conveyor belt can be baled and sold for reuse. And, perhaps most interesting of all, Mid-Atlantic workers begin the day by picking recyclables out of loads coming from hospitals served by the company s hauling operation. That s right, the facility is so serious that it tackles diversion from loads of hospital wastes. We re a recycling center first Pat Lavelle says Mid-Atlantic is a recycling center first and a transfer station second. We re not here to move a lot of trash, even though that s the way it may seem to work out, he says. We want to pull as much as we can out of the waste stream. Even though we ve been working at this facility for one year already, we still think we can get more out of the loads we re shipping to the landfill. One way to keep the place from being merely a trashmoving facility is to control the loads that come in the front door. Mid-Atlantic wants choice commercial waste loads, with high percentages of cardboard or other recyclable materials. To get more choice loads, Gallagher and Lavelle have worked (and still work) with DelVecchio collection employees to carefully pick the best loads for the station. Lavelle says the drivers were the first step in establishing the recycling operation, and remain keys to following through on John DelVecchio s edict. Roughly 85% of the loads accepted at the facility are 54 WASTE AGE / SEPTEMBER 1988

2 Pennsylvania Recycles Contd. from the DelVecchio refuse hauling operation. What Lavelle tries to avoid, he says, is accepting trucks full of wastes from restaurants. Any recyclables in these wet loads are contaminated, and, further, they re not much fun for workers to pick through. As a result, not all of DelVecchio Disposal s trucks tip at the facility. Workers, trained to spot recyclables, pick paper, wood, copper, steel, glass, corrugated, and more out of the waste stream. In addition, the center accepts loads of aluminum cans and newspapers from local municipalities. The facility is also a buyback center; citizens can drive in, drop off material, and leave with cash. The flexible design of the picking station allows workers to either pull out recyclables from mostly non-recyclable loads or pick out non-recyclables from paper-rich loads.... How it works The Mid-Atlantic facility is a fully enclosed, 30,000- square-foot building. Star of the facility is an HRB 10A baler, which moves recyclables and trash. Assisting it in the latter job is a Marathon M-1000 solid waste extruder. Tipping fee is $70 per ton. With a 32-foot eave height and 25-foot-high entryways, the building is spacious. There are two reasons for such a design: It accommodates roll-off trucks, which reach heights of more than 20 feet as they elevate to dump. With those cathedral-like entryways, the roll-offs can be elevating as they back into the building! It allowed the installation of the elevated sorting conveyor and line, which was not included in the initial plant construction. As it works today, materials reclamation begins even before a refuse collection truck gets into the place. Incoming trucks drive over a Fairbanks scale, at which they communicate via an Aiphone intercom system with Mid-Atlantic s gatekeeper/dispatcher. This key person is located some distance away from the scale, but has a clear view of it (and, of course, of the computerized data the scale is recording). DelVecchio drivers - especially those toting roll-off boxes - tell the dispatcher if they have a cardboard-rich load or a lot of metals this trip. Dispatchers in turn tell them which door of the facility to enter; if they re in doubt, they can Communicate with the facilities control room via a Motorola radio system. Aside from hospital wastes (see below), Mid- Atlantic's two shifts handle most loads in these ways: Loads rich in office paper are kept in one area Loads potentially rich in corrugated or metals are kept in another ares, or fed directly onto the conveyor.. Loads with very little potential for recycling are kept in yet another ares. The materials will be fed directly to a baler or compactor -- or, if time permits, they will be fed to the pickers. Why make these two or three piles? The separation on the picking floor, often aided by information from the DelVecio driver, simplifies life on the elevated picking line. When corrugated rich loads are fed to the converor, the pickers are looking to yank recyclables out. Besides corrugated, wood and metals are the gets. These items are fed into hoppers; the corrugated is thrown into a large pile. What all of this nets out to is that once the materials have made it beyond the pickers, the conveyor contains mostly refuse destined for a landfill. It can be fed directly to the baler or to the compactor; a switch in the control room directs the refuse to one or the other. When paper-rich loads are conveyed, workers must pick non-recyclables and non-paper recyclables off the belt. In this arrangement, the conveyor directly feeds only the baler, which bales the paper for shipment to a buyer. Sometimes, Gallagher says, when Mid-Atlantic s operations manager has spotted a lot of computer printouts among the paper, some of the pickers might be instructed to pick this highvalue item (approximately $240 per ton) out of the mixed paper loads (approximately $50 to $75 per ton) as well. Finally, if time permits, workers might be asked to pull recyclables out of the low-potential loads. Right now, Gallagher says, time usually does not permit. 56 WASTE AGE / SEPTEMBER 1988

3 Items recovered from the waste stream include corrugated, mixed waste paper (office file stock), computer printouts, steel, copper wire, aluminum, and more. In addition, the plant sells newsprint, glass, and metals; some of the paper is overissue newsprint direct from newspaper publishers, while some of it is material generated by recycling programs run by 12 local municipalities (see accompanying story) and the drive-in business. Starting day with hospital wastes Again, the DelVecchio edict is behind the Mid-Atlantic approach to recycle wastes from hospitals. In fact, a typical day at the facility will begin with hospital wastes. Why? Because the approach to recycling these potentially hazardous materials requires use of the entire facility tipping floor. While the rest of the Mid-Atlantic operation is not sloppy, special care is taken in handling hospital wastes. The wastes DelVecchio Disposal route trucks pick up from hospitals is of the non-biomedical variety (i.e., no red State Will Gladly Let You Recycle Tuesday... If You Produce. Reams Of Paperwork Today If you re going to recycle industrial waste; in Pennsylvnia, you re going to have to fall in love with paperwork. Under Pennsylvania law, a form must be filed in order to recycle or dispose of any industrial or process waste stream. The relative hazardous/ nonhazardous natures of the wastes in question do not change the need to file the Module One form (or Mod One, as it is called). This extends down to the most ridiculous level; companies that use chemicals such as lime, baking soda, etc., in the production process must obtain a Mod One approval to dispose of the empty bags in which the material was contained. If Mid- Atlantic has found a market for the textile cuttings of a dressmaker served by DelVecchio s trucks, a form must be riled. It s an additional hurdle we have to clear, and it takes time, explains Pat Lavelle. It also takes money; it costs us as much as $1,500 per Mod one application. Each form has to be approved by a licensed engineer. Sure it's a lot of trouble. But we think it s worth the effort, because by filing these Mod One forms and going through the process we're able to divert more of the waste stream. But the time hurts. Under the law, we have to file copies with the host municipality and county. They have up to 60 days to comment... and that s when the state Department of Environmental Regulation begins its review. When you are putting in all of this money and time to remove something as innocuous as textile cuttings from the waste stream, it makes you kind of wonder. - J.A.S. bags). Normal route trucks serve only hospitals that the company knows are separating these potentially infectious wastes out of the waste stream. Right now, this boils down to limiting the wastes accepted at Mid-Atlantic to materials from those hospitals served by DelVecchio s infectious waste operation. That s not necessarily the long-term plan, but that s the way it s working out right now, says Gallagher. What we want, basically, are the loads from the hospital cafeterias and kitchens. We want the corrugated. Loads are kept separated according to the generating hospital, and are spread out on the facility s floor with the use of a front-end loader. This leads to the only on-thefloor separation performed by Mid-Atlantic s crew. But first, before the workers go wading in to pull the recyclables, everyone looks closely at the loads. We re looking for something that is potentially infectious, such as a needle or some other wastes that should not be there, says Lavelle. We ve got protective suits not far from the tipping floor. If someone sees something, everything stops. One of us will get in the suit and go out and handle it. But because the DelVecchio infectious waste arm does a good job in working with its customer hospitals, Lavelle says, the suit normally stays on its hook. After all of the recyclables are pulled out of the loads, each hospital s wastes are sent to the baler, where they are still kept separate. The individual bales are identified by generating hospital (using orange spray paint, Mid-Atlantic workers spray an identifying letter on each bale). The landfills have confidence in our approach to this, but still they are wary of any wastes coming from hospitals, says Gallagher. By segregating each bale, and by identifying the bales, we protect both the landfill and ourselves. If we should miss some infectious wastes and the landfill operators should discover it, we will know from which hospital it came. But this preventive step, again, has proved unnecessary. Mid-Atlantic has yet to have a load of its baled hospital wastes sent back from a landfill. Transfer involves manifest form The care that Mid-Atlantic takes with hospital wastes is not atypical of the operation. A great deal of out-of-the-ordinary work has gone into the somewhat normal acceptance of refuse loads and the waste transfer operation. An example: Each outgoing load of refuse is manifested. Mid-Atlantic has its own manifest form, used by transfer trailer and flatbed drivers (whether they are company employees or work for subcontractors). The manifest form must be signed by someone at the landfill who accepts the 58 WASTE AGE / SEPTEMBER 1988

4 load; Mid-Atlantic currently uses as many as eight landfills. The form is kept on file at Mid-Atlantic s office. On the front end, Lavelle has developed documentation on each of the waste generators whose materials are brought to the facility. Each of the major generators has a file; wastes typically generated by the customer are characterized both in words and in pictures. That s right: Lavelle has spent, and will continue to spend, some of his time taking pictures of trash from key customers. Generators, and outside waste haulers, are asked to sign another form created by Mid-Atlantic. This form lists the kinds of wastes that the facility will not accept. The list is three-pages-long. The customer s representative, or the waste hauling company s manager or owner, signs to sig- Bales of hospital wastes are identified by a letter-code designating the generating hospital. Thus, should any infectious wastes be found in the bales later, the hospital can be identified.... nify that the generator understands that these wastes are never to be disposed in containers DelVecchio Disposal will empty or haul. A final, quite serious note about the company s approach to waste transfer concerns hazardous wastes. When ordinary commercial refuse is being looked at and picked over so closely, wastes that have been improperly disposed are likely to turn up in greater quantity. What s the solution to this? Early, serious inspection practices, says Bill Gallagher. We are not shy about sending materials back, he says. When we find these materials, we get the truck that brought them in to take them back to the generator. I m talking about sending back cans of paint thinner that have that much liquid left in them. We ve done it. Gallagher is holding his thumb and index finger less than one inch apart. The future: more recycling Plans for the future include maximizing the facility s ability to respond to John DelVecchio s edict. This higher percentage of recycling will come out of a larger volume, as well; Mid-Atlantic recently filed for a permit expansion that would allow it to attack 2,100 yards per day of materials, up from the current 1,600-yard permit limit. One future tactic planned is processing of rubber from tires and wood from pallets into fuel. Mid-Atlantic has purchased a Mac/Saturn shredder, which probably will be kept busy eight hours a day shredding these items separately. We have secured markets for both the rubber and the wood, says Lavelle. We ve been awaiting approval from the state Department of Environmental Regulation for a permit amendment allowing us to do this. The issuance of new Pennsylvania solid waste regulations in April has delayed the shredding operation s start. Another strategy that may be implemented is expansion of the building. Gallagher says the tipping floor is filling up right now and, as a result, his workers are having trouble keeping these piles with 60% recyclables separate from those having 90% or more recyclables in them, as an example. His wish list includes creation of a separate tipping area for office paper loads, where these can be stored in greater quantity and kept separate from unrelated material. What s more, the future may see Mid-Atlantic go to three shifts per day. This would boost the amount recycled from 20% to perhaps 25% or better, Gallagher and Lavelle say. What s the holdup in doing this? For one thing, the facility has only been operational since Aug. 28, and the picking stations on the conveyor have been at work for a shorter period. Gallagher says he wants to make sure the facility s working the way he wants it to - especially on the maintenance end - before he adds a new shift and a tougher workload for the building and its equipment. Finally, there is the question of plastics. With as many as 12 municipalities now bringing newspapers to the facility, Gallagher and Lavelle know it s just a matter of time before these cities and towns start collecting (and bringing in) cans and bottles - PET soda bottles among them. Lavelle has already been at work seeking an approach that will make plastic recycling work from one of the company s larger waste generators, which has four locations that produce plastic wastes. We re working with the customer, to see if those four locations could source-separate the plastic wastes. Under Pennsylvania regulations, the materials do not need a 60 WASTE AGE / SEPTEMBER 1988

5 Module One application [see accompanying story on paperwork] filed if it is source-separated. That approach has more promise. Lessons learned While much of the foregoing may make it seem like DelVecchio, Gallagher, and Lavelle are know-it-alls about recycling plants, they are quick to admit they ve learned some lessons the hard way... by making mistakes. I guess the good thing, which is also a bad thing, about running this kind of plant is that there's no textbook to which you can refer for the answers, says Gallagher. So we ve changed how we do the job as we go along. Some of the changes that the Mid-Atlantic people are willing to discuss include the following: Initially, the facility was planned without the conveyor belt/sorting stations. Recycling was performed by spreading out all loads on the tipping floor. The overtime was murder, says Gallagher. The sorting station was the solution; it s cut greatly into the overtime. But even better, our corrugated loads are cleaner now, and we re getting much higher volumes recycled. Gallagher and Lavelle had been teaching the plant s workers to accept mixed waste paper that would have been rejected according to original standards. We work with about 10 mills, and we discovered from talking with them that our mixed paper bales did not have to be that clean. Some of the paper we were pulling out of the loads can be left in. I ve learned that you can t live without those lagher says. The company also uses a Clark front-end loader. Gallagher turned to the small, maneuverable Bobcat units after initial operations with larger units took too much time and effort. A final lesson: The key is to keep the line going, to keep the feed to the conveyor belt and the pickers steady, says Gallagher. You do not want these people standing around. Other lessons for other recycling/transfer facilities are inherent in the Mid-Atlantic plant s design. One example: The site has a sprinkler system located above the push pit and compactor - a necessity to keep dust down when dry loads enter a building in which eight workers are working at the picking station at all times. Another operational approach that seems to work: Even with what he sees as limited floor space, Gallagher reserves some square feet for a flatbed trailer to park inside the building. After achieving a full load of bales, the flatbed is tarped inside the building, a good neighbor policy that cuts down on No one driving by the Mid- Atlantic facility wouldguess that large volumes of trash are being handled insid... Mid-Atlantic s modified roll-off container makes recyclable drop-off simple. Residential Wastes Are Also A Target With recycling heating up in eastern Pennsylvania, Mid-Atlantic has seen the number of municipalities in the area that need its services more than double in 1988, to the current figure of 12. Currently, most of these cit- ies and towns bring in just newspapers, Pat Lavelle says. They will probably bring other items, he adds, as their curbside collection programs expand. Mid-Atlantic pays the municipalities for their recyclables. But the company also is working out on its own outreach program, to bring in more newspapers, cans, and bottles. Right now it is involved in five community programs, including work with the city of Scranton and local Lion s Clubs. To help in these local ef- forts, which right now center on drop-off centers, Gallagher developed a modified 30-yard roll-off container. The container, with metal dividers to keep recyclables separate, has lockable steps on the sides. At the site, these steps are locked into place, so recyclers can walk up and drop their materials into the box. When ready to be hauled away, the steps are folded up and locked into the side of the con- tainer. - J.A.S. 62 WASTE AGE / SEPTEMBER 1988