Waste Appreciation: Visit A Landfill in 2012

Hi! Happy New Year Wasters! How about this to add to your list of New Year’s Resolutions?

I thought that I would pass on the contents of the email below which came from a subscriber. I think that there must be many people who, like him, have busy lives and before 2011, never gave waste disposal much thought.

“For 43 years I have been someone that never truly finished the concept ; when I toss stuff away it goes… I have given myself an excellent gift this year ; call it a trip, if you like, but I took myself to my town’s landfill and had my eyes opened for the 1st time. Perhaps the idea of somebody reaching their 40′s and still not being contientious of recycling is one that sounds fantastic, well, it’s the actual facts.

 

 

I did not grow up imagining the Earth covered in over-flowing landfills, piles and heaps of rubbish as high as the tallest building. That wasn’t my experience.

But because the concept of leaving too much waste for the Earth to handle is a sour fact today, I have started to teach myself.

I suspect I have always thought of using credit cards as not being real cash, I now see that is the same way as I viewed trash.

I know I have read about landfills becoming, well, full and the way in which that will set off a problem but till I took myself out to the site itself, I continued to have this immature idea that when I put something into the rubbish can, it just went – away.

Seeing, with my very own eyes, the area appointed for my community’s left-overs was like an enormous slap of reality. I was ultimately able to understand the concept ; “if I am not the only one throwing things away thoughtlessly, and if others are doing it as well, this space won’t last long at all.”

I was shocked at some of the things I saw at the town’s landfill, too. There were pieces of furniture that, being somebody creative, I could see would make nice trash-to-treasures pieces. Perhaps these once beautiful and still useable items might be the one piece that brought the feeling of a room together, that finished what the room is to feel just like and express. As an alternative somebody tossed them out and they now take up a ton of space in a limited area and cause me stressfulness, not contentment.

I am lucky because my youngsters, who are early teens, have been taught about the significance of recycling and the significance of what we must do to keep the world from being buried in pointless trash. They’ve been concentrating on the lessons that have come their way, where as, I had to see it for myself before I might be galvanized to switch the way that I do things.

The pleasant news is, it only took one quick trip to the landfill, for me to come to my senses and make changes about the way In which I do things and about the way In which I think.

If we aren’t thinking worldwide when talking about waste, and what we are leaving behind, we aren’t being smart. Grab some youngsters, or some forty-somethings and take yourself on a field expedition that may, do for you what it probably did for me ; make the changes that are necessary for me to see what the grim reality of our situation is and change the way In which I do things. ”

Of course I am not suggesting that you climb over a fence to visit a landfill.

Most large well run landfills nowadays provide a resource centre where school children are educated about waste management and recycling during school trips, and a short phone call to the landfill office before you leave should ensure that you can choose a time when the facility will be open. Such facilities are usually located at a point where there is also a landfill viewing point and the staff will be on hand to answer any questions you may have.

Even if the landfill does not have a visitor resource centre, in my experience the staff, given adequate notice will often be happy to meet any local resident and show them around their landfill for half an hour.

In fact, as residents we can do a lot to encourage our landfill operators to maintain the best standards. Keeping a landfill tidy is hard work, but it is much more rewarding if those doing it also feel that the community cares about their landfill, rather than only ever just complaining when things go wrong. 

So, how’s that for a New Year’s Resolution? Make that visit to a landfill! It might be quite an “eye opener” just as it was for our reader.Who knows, you might even come back impressed if areas of the landfill have been well restored.

SustainableBusiness.com News

Honda (NYSE: HMC) announced today that 10 of its 14 North American manufacturing plants are now operating with zero waste to landfill, while the remaining four plants are functioning with “virtually zero” waste to landfill.

The announcement marks a significant milestone on the company’s “Green Factory” initiative.

Honda has dramatically reduced the waste it sends to landfills – from 62.8 pounds in fiscal year 2001 to an estimated 1.8 pounds per automobile in the current fiscal year. Among all of its 14 plants in North America, Honda now sends less than one-half of 1% of operating waste to landfills.

Remaining waste product is either recycled or used for energy recovery, the company says.

Honda Manufacturing of Alabama, in Lincoln, Ala., became the first zero-waste-to-landfill auto plant in North America at the outset of production in 2001. Honda Manufacturing of Indiana, in Greensburg, Ind., also started production as a zero-waste-to-landfill plant in 2008.

Since the establishment of zero-waste-to-landfill production in its Alabama plant in 2001, Honda has undertaken a major initiative at plants throughout the region to eliminate landfill waste. To understand what comprised each plant’s landfill waste, Honda associates went “Dumpster diving,” looking at the composition of the waste material resulting from all of its production activities.

On the basis of these findings and subsequent investigations, Honda associates at all 14 plants in North America have identified and implemented hundreds of waste-reduction and waste-recycling initiatives.

These initiatives run the gamut, from the reduction of offal (metal scrap) in stamping processes, to improved parts packaging for ease of recycling, to the minimization of paper and plastic waste from cafeterias.

As a result of these efforts over the past 10 years, the company has prevented an estimated 4.4 billion pounds of waste material from being sent to landfills, which is equivalent to the amount of household waste produced by 2.8 million Americans, roughly the population of Chicago, in a single year.

Many of the waste-reduction and recycling activities were undertaken through Honda’s associate involvement programs, including its “NH Circle” quality circles, where teams of associates throughout the company engage in an annual competition to improve efficiency, cost and waste reduction.

Examples of waste reduction initiatives include:

Engine plants in Ohio, Alabama and Canada are reusing virtually all leftover sand from aluminum and ferrous metal casting operations. In FY2010, the three plants recycled a total of 9,400 tons of sand, which is used as mulch and landscaping material, and in concrete products.The Marysville Auto Plant initiated a program to reduce the amount of offal by reducing the size of steel sheets used to stamp new body parts. The program, which significantly reduces the environmental impact of transporting and recycling the steel, is now being adopted by other Honda factories in North America around the world. Honda Power Equipment in Swepsonville, N.C., initiated a closed-loop system for recycling aluminum scrap from the machining trimming process, melting the scrap into ingots that are recycled into die-cast operations.

The East Liberty, Ohio, auto plant built a recycling bin for bolts, other unused fasteners and parts packaging, enabling the factory to recycle more than 22 tons of steel each year.

Within the past year, all four Honda plants in Ohio completed their initiative to eliminate more than 500 metric tons of cafeteria waste produced annually. The plants joined with other Honda plants in North America in transitioning to washable dishware and to disposing of solid waste through composting, recycling and energy recovery.The Marysville and East Liberty, Ohio, plants also recently began washing and reusing thousands of plastic caps each day that are used to protect parts during shipping.

The only two remaining landfill waste streams in all of Honda’s North American production activities are: paper, plastic and food waste from associate break rooms and cafeterias at Honda’s Mexico automobile and motorcycle plants, where there exists no more environmentally responsible means of disposal; and a byproduct of the paint pretreatment process for aluminum body panels at both the East Liberty and Marysville, Ohio, auto plants, which, due to EPA regulations, is non-recyclable.

Honda says it is working with the EPA to identify an alternative means of disposal.

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SUGAR LAND, TX, Jul 15, 2011 (MARKETWIRE via COMTEX) — Researched by Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas) — Most states have government-backed incentives and regulations regarding air quality. Many of these are aimed at increasing the use of renewable energy.

California focuses on meeting ambitious environmental goals every year. The state’s environmental goals are reflected in a renewables portfolio standard (RPS), a Bioenergy Action Plan, and Executive Order S-3-05. The current state goal is to have electricity retail sellers produce 33% of their power from renewable sources by 2020. The Altamont landfill gas (LFG)-to-liquefied natural gas (LNG) facility near Livermore, California, is an example of a currently operating renewable energy project. The facility is a joint venture between Linde North America (Murray Hill, New Jersey) and Waste Management .

The facility is considered the world’s largest LFG-to-LNG plant.

For details, view the entire article by subscribing to Industrial Info’s Premium Industry News at http://www.industrialinfo.com/showNews.jsp?newsitemID=183026 , or browse other breaking industrial news stories at www.industrialinfo.com .

Industrial Info Resources (IIR), with world headquarters in Sugar Land, Texas, is the leading provider of global market intelligence specializing in the industrial process, heavy manufacturing and energy markets. IIR’s quality-assurance philosophy, the Living Forward Reporting Principle(TM), provides up-to-the-minute intelligence on what’s happening now, while constantly keeping track of future opportunities.

For more information send inquiries to oilandgasproductiongroup@industrialinfo.com or visit our website at www.industrialinfo.com .

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TOWN OF MENASHA News: Standing in the parks department shop with a Honeywell gas meter in his hands, Randy Gallow slides a metal cover away from a manhole grate in the floor and stands over it for several seconds.

“There’s nothing there,” said Gallow, a streets superintendent for the Town of Menasha, looking at the meter’s digital reading.

He repeats the test in work areas, corners and secluded areas of the building where the air system might not naturally dissipate any gas concentrations.

Since last November, when potentially dangerous levels of methane were discovered in a landfill near the town’s municipal complex, meters have been used frequently to check for evidence of methane gas inside work areas.

While town officials and hired consultants have yet to find methane anywhere inside the buildings, several newly installed outdoor vapor probes have registered methane levels in excess of the lower explosive limit of 5 percent methane.

“If left unmanaged, it could be an explosive situation,” said Christopher Rog, principal geologist/senior project manager for Sand Creek Consultants of Rhinelander. “But we feel like we’ve got it managed.”

In order to further safeguard town employees and the town’s multimillion dollar investment in its facilities, the Town Board this week authorized borrowing up to $527,000 to pursue installation of methane gas mitigation systems in three areas.

“Solid waste and water in all landfills creates methane,” Rog said.

With elevated methane readings so close to the town’s vehicle storage building, he said it is likely that methane has migrated underneath.

A vapor extraction system is the top priority, along with passive venting, both of which should take about three weeks and be completed by the end of August, Rog said.

“These are permanent solutions we are installing,” he said.

Two parallel trenches, one 600 feet and the other about 700 feet, will be dug about 4 feet deep with vent wells that go down to the bedrock spaced every 15 feet. Rog said one trench is connected to an active blower system while the other is connected to an air intake system.

Community Development Director George Dearborn said the town’s E. Shady Lane landfill is split into three disposal sites on the western portion of 116 acres of farmland and gravel pit the town acquired in the late 1960s.

The former town dump is a 12-acre site northwest of the municipal complex. It was closed and capped in the mid-1970s.

A second site, known as the town’s sanitary landfill, consists of two trenches west of Municipal Drive. It was closed in the mid-1980s.

A third site is located immediately north of the town’s Vehicle Storage Building, a large hill on a four-acre site known as the Kimberly-Clark Corp. “greenings pile.” It contains paper sludge from the former K-C Lakeview mill deposited between the mid-1970s and mid-1980s.

Rog said the methane is coming from two primary sources: the K-C greenings pile and the town’s sanitary landfill.

While the town owns the land underneath, K-C owns the “greenings pile” and is responsible for maintaining it. In November, a technician doing routine monitoring smelled landfill gas and confirmed the presence of elevated levels of methane, which was reported to the state Department of Natural Resources and the town.

Since then, K-C has invested a significant amount of money to mitigate methane levels and extend the life of the landfill by replacing the cap, repairing a collection system and expanding its methane collection system, said Christine Spella, K-C communications manager.

“We continue to share information and best practices with the town and the WDNR and are confident their remediation efforts will safely and efficiently reduce the methane levels across the town’s landfill site,” Spella said.

“We will continue to monitor and manage all aspects of the greenings pile moving forward.”

Town Administrator Jeff Sturgell said he does not think there was “any real danger” but town officials have taken the precautionary measures nonetheless.

“Let’s deal with the issue now so that it doesn’t ever become an issue in the future,” Sturgell said.

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Pittsboro, NC – Computer equipment and televisions will be banned from disposal in North Carolina landfills as of July 1, as required by NC Session Law 2010-67 passed last year by the General Assembly. This means, as of July 1, these items cannot go in the trash.

The law provides that televisions and computer equipment, which includes laptops, desktops, monitors, printers, scanners and peripherals such as mice and keyboards, cannot be disposed in any NC landfill. Other components of the law are designed to create statewide recycling opportunities for discarded electronics and to place significant responsibilities on electronics manufacturers to help fund and create those opportunities.

All computer manufacturers are required to offer at least a free mail-back program for their own equipment, and some will offer additional kinds of recycling options. A number of retailers also offer recycling of electronics, as do some nonprofit and charitable agencies. A comprehensive list of recycling options for residents and businesses can be found at p2pays.org/electronics/.

In preparation for the ban, Chatham County is expanding its existing electronics recycling program. Special recycling containers called E-Cycle Stations will be set up by July 1st at all 12 county Collection Centers to accept electronics weighing less than 50 pounds from county residents with a current decal. Residents are required to use these new containers and should not place electronics in the trash compactors or in bulky item bins. Collection Center attendants will show residents where to carefully place or stack these items. Due to privacy and safety concerns, all items in the E-Cycle Stations become the property of Chatham County and cannot be removed.

If electronic items are in good working order, and residents choose to leave them in the Swap Shop, they should make sure that all personal information has been removed from data storage. Residents are also encouraged to seek donation opportunities through local nonprofits and repair service companies. Call the Waste Management Department for guidance at (919) 542-5516.

During regular business hours (M-F, 7am to 4pm), the Chatham County Main Waste Management Facility at 720 County Landfill Road offers an E-Cycle Station for county residents disposing of electronic items weighing over 50 pounds. This E-Cycle Station is also open to small businesses and nonprofit organizations, and residents that live in the town limits of Pittsboro, Siler City, and Goldston. Anyone recycling electronics at this facility must first sign in at the county Waste Management office, and should bring someone to help unload heavy items. A decal is not currently required to recycle electronics at this location.

As outlined in the law, the General Assembly recognizes that discarded computer equipment and televisions are rapidly growing and complex waste streams. The disposal ban will help address the potential for toxic materials found in some electronics to enter solid waste landfills.

The ban also helps divert highly usable materials to a growing electronics recycling industry in the state. North Carolina is home to a number of major national and regional electronics processors with investments of plants and equipment exceeding $50 million that employ more than 300 North Carolinians.

“By capturing valuable materials for reuse and reducing our dependence on landfills, electronics recycling can help us achieve both our environmental and economic development goals,” said Dee Freeman, secretary of the NC Department of Environment and Natural Resources. “I encourage all North Carolinians to join in this effort to make the electronics disposal ban a success.”

Computer equipment and televisions join a list of other materials banned from disposal in North Carolina, which most recently have included plastic bottles, wooden pallets and oil filters. These bans have resulted in increased recycling of the materials and have helped spur further growth in the state’s recycling economy.

For a list of all items accepted in Chatham County’s Electronics Recycling Program, visit chathamnc.org/wastemanagement or call Teresa Chapman with the Chatham County Waste Management Department at (919) 542-5516.

For details on the new state law, please visit portal.ncdenr.org/web/wm/sw/electronics, or contact Scott Mouw with the Division of Environmental Assistance and Outreach at scott.mouw@ncdenr.gov or (919) 715-6512.

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An ambitious plan to build a huge shopping, office and housing complex on top of an old landfill in St. Petersburg has been scrapped, the developers acknowledged Tuesday.

A group called Florida Gateway Development I LLC had proposed buying the Toytown landfill along Interstate 275 from Pinellas County. There, it planned as many as 2,100 housing units, up to 1.5 million square feet of shops and restaurants and up to 2 million square feet of office space.

Florida Gateway Development I was comprised of Industrial Realty Group of Los Angeles and Bear Creek Capital of Cincinnati.

However, Pinellas County leaders hadn’t heard from the developers recently and began having doubts about the project.

On Tuesday, Pinellas County’s economic development department got official word that the developers were pulling the plug. Bill Tippmann, a consultant working for the developers, sent a letter to Pinellas County saying economic conditions hadn’t improved enough for the developers to keep making the necessary commitments to keep the project alive.

Florida Gateway Development I was facing a July 1 deadline to put up a $350,000 deposit on the Toytown land.

Tippmann did not return calls from The Tampa Tribune in recent days.

The Pinellas County Commission is expected to talk about what to do with Toytown at its July 12 meeting. An unnamed company from Germany has proposed building a solar energy field in Pinellas County, possibly at Toytown, said Mike Meidel, the county’s economic development director.

However, Meidel said the Toytown site may be too valuable for a solar field alone.

“I personally don’t see it as highest and best use for that property,” he said.

Some people have suggested building a new stadium for the Tampa Bay Rays at Toytown, even though it never got past the hypothetical stage. Any stadium developer probably also would want to build a larger retail complex, so that sports fans could visit nearby shops and restaurants, Meidel said.

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The BBC’s Springwatch has been looking at the wildlife that lives on rubbish dumps, which also includes snakes, badgers and birds.

Viridor, which runs the Great Blakenham landfill near Ipswich, has to move great crested newts to safe wildlife areas at its site.

The company’s ecologist can oversee the movement of over 10,000 newts a year.

Viridor operates the site which has been a landfill since 1992 when it ceased to be an operational quarry and cement works.

Clive Barber, general manager, said: “Certainly if you’re here first thing in the morning you can see foxes and deer quite regularly.”

The company is currently dumping 80-100 lorry loads of waste in the landfill each day.

Other areas are being prepared to be used as landfill, while the newts are moved to areas which have finished being landfill.

Giant plastic covers are spread over the rubbish to seal it in and at least a metre of earth is put on top and then landscaped.

Litter such as plastic bags can blow into the newt ponds, but it has to stay there in the summer.

Jamie Tompkins, unit manager, said: “You can’t take it out at the moment in case there’s any newt eggs on the litter itself.”

The landfill forms rich pickings for sea birds, which can number in the tens of thousands in the winter.

Viridor uses birds of prey to frighten the gulls away or kill the weaker ones.

Paul Morris, bird controller, said the gulls are a pest: “They don’t attack the workmen, but if they’re left alone they will climb all over the machinery and do what they do after they’ve eaten.

“And you would literally be driving [the heavy plant which works on top of the landfill] through a carpet of gulls and it’s not safe.

“Landfills and quarries are ideal for wildlife, which just needs a habitat, food and very little human contact which is what you have here.”

Mr Barber said the rate at which the landfill is filling up is slowing. He said in 1996, 100% of household waste went to landfill, but it is down to 40% in 2011.

“At the moment we’ve got about five million cubic metres of void space left, so we’re probably going to be here for the next 10-15 years,” he said.

“People are just more green – we’re not using as many carrier bags and things like that. There’s still a way to go, but we are changing.

“We are now a predominantly recycling company, so we’re gone from a throwaway society to a resource recycling society and we make out of the recycling side of it as well as the landfill side of it.”

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The amount of waste going to landfill in the United Kingdom has continued to fall in 2009, according to figures from the government environmental department Defra.

Provisional estimates from the department’s survey of municipal waste in England incorporate the first quarter of the 2009/10 financial year and are based on information supplied by local authorities to WasteDataFlow.

To minimise the effects of seasonal fluctuations, comparisons are made between the year April 2008 to March 2009 and the year July 2008 to June 2009, that is, encompassing the provisional results for the quarter April to June 2009.

Total municipal waste decreased by 0.28 million tonnes in the year to end June 2009, to 27. 06 million tonnes. A decrease in total household waste was observed, from 24.3 to 24.1 million tonnes, or 1.1%. Waste going to landfill dropped by 3.1% (13.4 million tonnes).

There was also an increase in the household recycling rate, from the average rate of 37.6% between April 2008 and March 2009 to 38.3% between July 2008 and June 2009. The average residual household waste (which is the amount of household waste which is not recycled) decreased from 295 kg per head between April 2008 and March 2009 to 289 kg per head between July 2008 and June 2009.

Defra explained that the data are provisional as not all returns have completed full validation and returns to WasteDataFlow can be revised by local authorities during the scheme year. “There are also seasonal effects on waste arisings and management which means care needs to be taken when assessing trends,” it explained Final figures will be released in the annual National Statistics release in November 2010.

For April to June 2009, all local authorities submitted data to WasteDataFlow and at the time the data were downloaded for this release, all authorities (358) had completed validation.

A European Commission study published on 1 February 2010 counsels setting up a dedicated European body to oversee the execution and enforcement of ECU waste law. The study is a part of a collection of steps being taken by the Commission to enhance waste management and guarantee it meets the standards set by ECU legislation to guard voters and the environment.

Illegal discarding of waste continues on a big scale, many landfill sites are sub-standard and in some Member States basic waste infrastructure is still missing. Illegal waste shipments are also a concern.

A second report made public today explains nearly one 5th of waste shipments checked as an element of recent enforcement actions in Member States were illegal. Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas expounded :

“Compliance with ECU legislation is crucial if we are to reach the overarching objective of ECU waste legislation, which is to offer protection to the health of European voters and the environment. We must look at all the options, including setting up an ECU agency or body which could enable ECU legislation to supply the maximum advantages for voters, the environment and the ECU economy.”

Study counsels dedicated agency to apply waste law Overseeing the safe and environmentally sound management of waste is one of the most significant environmental challenges facing the EU today. A projected 2.6 bill tons of waste is generated in the EU every year about 90 million tons of this is filed as unsafe.

The study broadcast today counsels setting up a dedicated agency at ECU level to take on the fundamental issues of poor implementation and enforcement of European waste legislation.

The size of the issue has grown in recent times following increases in waste generated and shipped in the enlarged ECU . In 2008, the European Parliament adopted a resolution encouraging the Commission to report on the viability of creating a “Community environmental inspection force”. The agency would carry out a number of jobs like reviews of enforcement systems in Member States, coordinated controls and inspection activities. This would be mixed with the making of a particular European body answerable for direct inspections and controls of facilities and sites in major cases of failure to comply.

A European network of Member States would support the agency in a number of activities. The changes are based primarily on replies from Member State officers and shareholders thru questionnaires, interviews and informal workshops. The yearly cost for carrying out the changes is guessed at only over Euros 16,000,000.

As well as other waste-related benefits, full implementation of ECU waste law would reduce emissions of CO2, including methane from landfills. This would save 2.5 bln yearly at today’s carbon cost of around thirteen Euros per tonne.

Other important business benefits from reinforcing implementation include a level playing field for European firms, better encouragement for innovation and increased access to valuable secondary raw materials. A comprehensive cost-benefit analysis will be carried out this year. Further steps might be suggested during 2011.

Gaps in implementation of EU waste law Current openings in implementation and enforcement have led straight to wide-scale illegal junking and enormous numbers of landfills and other facilities and sites that don’t meet ECU standards. In some Member States, waste infrastructure is insufficient or missing ( see IP / 09 / 1795 ). Further details : http://ec.europa.eu/environment/waste/index.htm .

The company said that it had received written consent from the council to initiate the appeal proceedings, following March’s initial refusal of the application, which saw 20 out of 22 members of the council’s planning committee voting against the plans (see letsrecycle.com story).

Lodging an appeal means that the final decision on whether or not the plans are given the go-ahead will now be made by the government’s planning inspectorate through a public inquiry, which is expected to be held in the first half of 2010.

The company’s plans to develop the plant, known as the Cornwall Energy Recovery Centre (CERC), represented the centrepiece of the 30-year PFI-funded waste treatment contract that it signed with Cornwall county council in October 2006 (see letsrecycle.com story).

And the company’s project director, David Buckle, claimed that its proposals to develop the CERC to treat the county’s residual household waste continued to be the best option.

“There is an urgent need for this facility to avoid a waste management crisis and to provide a modern waste management solution for the whole county in which we produce energy from non-recycled waste, rather than landfill it,” he said.

If built, SITA UK has said the CERC would produce enough electricity to power the equivalent of 21,000 homes, as well as producing heat which could be provided to local businesses, and in particular the china clay industry.