Environment- July 2000
by Phillip Meeks

Diverting Solutions
Local governments find new approaches to waste management

IAccording to 1995 statistics of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), each year the U.S. produces 279 million tons of hazardous waste and 208 million tons of municipal solid waste (commonly called trash). The EPA reports that 67 percent of all solid wastes generated in the U.S. in 1990 went to landfills. Seventeen percent was recycled. The remaining 16 percent was incinerated.

Similar to the national situation, Kentucky has limited landfill space. George Gilbert, engineering consultant with the Kentucky Division of Waste Management, says that Kentucky has 18.2 years capacity remaining in its 26 contained landfills.

Although Kentucky has no laws setting recycling standards, the Division of Waste Management’s unofficial goal is to divert 25 percent of all waste from going into landfills. Figures in a 1997 issue of BioCycle magazine reveal the Commonwealth’s nearness to that goal: Kentucky’s waste is 82 percent landfilled, 18 percent recycled.

In the world of recycling, all materials are not created equal. The feasibility of recycling a particular material depends on factors including proximity to markets, processing costs and the availability of specialized equipment. Two materials that DWM would most like to see filtered entirely out of landfills, says Gilbert, are tires and yard waste.

Dealing with yard waste
Typically, brush and leaves present waste problems for cities. Because organic materials can be simply converted into mulch or compost, yard waste is an easy first target for landfill diversion programs.

The city of Paducah is one yard waste management success story. Says Sarah Phillips, Paducah’s solid waste superintendent, “We were the first municipality in the state to be certified as a composting operation with biosolids.” By mixing leaves and wood chips with biosolids (sludge) from wastewater treatment operations, a marketable compost is produced.

Demand for the finished product is high, and the compost sells quickly. One day this spring, more than 30,000 cubic feet of leaf compost was sold in a single day, mostly one pickup truckload at a time ($10 for a screened truckload of compost, $5 for an unscreened truckload).

The Kentucky Pollution Prevention Center’s newsletter, The BottomLine, says the cost of composting yard wastes and biosolids is less than disposal costs. Since Paducah sells about $20,000 of compost annually, the program saves the city $193,000 each year.

City workers handle most of Paducah’s composting processes, but brush grinding is contracted out to Environmental Wood Recycling, a six-year-old Russellville-based company. With two grinders and seven employees, EWR has clients in seven states. “A lot of our customers are medium-sized cities who don’t believe they can justify buying a grinder,” says Jack White, president and owner of EWR.

Tire-derived fuels
Waste tires are another hindrance to landfills. Because tires are capable of taking up so much landfill space, they are a major focus of the Division of Waste Management’s landfill diversion efforts. In the late 1990s, DWM approached Westvaco in Wickliffe, Dravo Lime in Maysville and Owensboro Municipal Utilities (OMU) with the mission of testing tire-derived fuels. According to Jim Roberts, fuel and byproducts superintendent for OMU, the utility conducted two successful test runs and will soon use tire chips to produce electricity for its 25,000 customers. The fuel mixture will be two percent tire chips and 98 percent coal.

Two Kentucky tire processing companies, Tire Recycling, Inc., of Philpot, and Martin Tire Recycling in Marion will together chip over one million tires per year for OMU. The Spring 2000 issue of Kentucky Natural Resources and Environmental Protection Cabinet’s Land, Air & Water estimates that Kentucky generates four million waste tires annually, so the tires used in OMU’s operation will make a significant impact on waste tire management in the state.

Roberts says one of the greatest drawbacks of this program is the additional handling required to utilize an estimated 28 tons per day of tire-derived fuel.

Leading the way in recycling
Lexington-based Lexmark, Inc. was one of the founding members of the National Office Paper Recycling Project, an organization promoting recycling in the corporate world. According to Pam Winter, director of Lexmark’s Environmental Safety and Health Program, Lexmark has seen a 70 percent increase in recycled materials since 1991. Last year, the company recycled 4.3 million pounds of cardboard, 3.4 million pounds of paper and one million pounds of scrap metal.

Lexmark encourages recycling among its customers. Manufacturing Engineer Tony Zupancic explains the company’s Operation Resource plan: “We have a program called a “prebate” program, where a customer gets a discount if they promise to return their used printer cartridges later.” Since Operation Resource’s introduction, cartridge returns have increased by 200 percent.

Other issues in waste management
Waste management programs have created markets for byproducts virtually unheard of 20 years ago. For example, a recent National Public Radio broadcast featured “biodiesel” made from restaurant waste. This viable and clean alternative to other fuels has not yet experienced marketing success due to its high production cost.

Some sectors of Kentucky’s wood industry now use their wood waste for fuel as well. These companies either market sawdust-derived fuel pellets to other industries or use the wastes in their lumber-drying operations.

Phillip Meeks is a staff writer for The Lane Report.
phillipmeeks@lanereport.com

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