Category: Case History

Proper solid waste management is just one of the many intricacies involved in the effective management of a correctional facility, but the impact can carry a lot of weight-literally. Correctional facilities hold hundreds, sometimes thousands, of inmates. In the feeding, training and the day-to-day activities of each of these inmates, tons of solid waste are produced. As the New York State Department of Corrections has discovered, much of this waste is recyclable.

Solid waste programs are present in each of the 70 correctional facilities under the jurisdiction of the New York State Department of Corrections, and nearly every one of them now recycles. He state correctional facilities are charged with holding the state’s more than 71,000 inmates, in facilities from work camps on up to maximum security facilities.

Just as in many other states, the correctional system is directly impacted by state recycling regulations, such as the Solid Waste Management Act of 1988. This act made it mandatory for all state-regulated facilities to incorporate a recycling program into their solid waste programs. Then, in 1989, the importance of this Act was reinforced by the Governor with Executive Order 142, maintaining that all state agencies should begin recycling.

The initial recycling program included steel and aluminum cans, corrugated cardboard, plastic and polystyrene containers, as well as mixed office paper, textiles, mattresses and food wastes. It was initially a big jump into a recycling
program but many of these recyclables were being generated in the food service facilities and dining halls. As a result, they centered a large portion of the program on this area.

Each day, more than 200,000 meals are prepared within the New York State Correctional system and with each of these meals, recyclables are produced. Steel cans and corrugated cardboard are the top two recyclables generated by weight within this area. Many of the ingredients in these meals come stored in one-gallon steel food cans.

Steel cans are a natural choice to include in correctional system recycling programs as they use thousands each day and there is a stable market that has been in place for years to recycle them.

In a majority of the state correctional facilities, the steel cans are emptied and then rinsed in dishwater or cleaned in extra space in the dishwasher. The cans are then loaded into clear plastic bags, which are collected and stored.

There is also a food production unit within the system, which prepares the food for 30 prisons. Within this facility, the rinsing and crushing of the steel cans is automated, and the crushed cans from this unit are also stored for pick-up.

Once a week the stored cans from the system are collected and transported to one of eight regional processing facilities. At the processing facilities, the cans are baled and prepared to be sent on to steel mills to become new products.

Last year, the New York State Correctional System recycled more than 2,100 tons of steel cans. This is in addition to the 510 tons of steel recycled from machinery changes, refurbishments and scrap from vocational programs.

Steel is everywhere in correctional facilities from washing machines to steel appliances to steel cans. The buildings themselves are even built from steel.

Behind each of the five main restaurants in Sonora, Texas rests a bright yellow dumpster. These dumpsters play an integral part in the town’s commercial/institutional recycling program, which was set into motion in early 1994.

The town provided the restaurants with the dumpsters in which to source separate and store one-gallon steel cans.

One-gallon steel cans play an important role in food service recycling programs. Because more than 90 percent of metal food containers are made from steel, anywhere food is prepared, steel cans are used and should be recycled when empty.

Restaurant staff employees rinse one-gallon steel food cans clean with leftover dishwater. The cans are then loaded into the yellow dumpster, where they are collected once a week by truck and taken to the town’s storage center. There, the steel cans are combined with recyclables collected from the town’s drop-off recycling program.

The town’s drop-off recycling program was established in 1990. Residents source separate steel and aluminum cans, glass bottles and jars, used oil and steel oil filters, and tires into separate dumpsters. The collection site is maintained daily by town personnel.

Steel cans are delivered to a ferrous scrap yard in San Angelo. About seven tons of steel cans were recycled last year.

“The philosophy behind our recycling programs is that at least we’re keeping these recyclables out of landfills,” said Jim Garrett, recycling coordinator for Sonora.

“Way out here in west Texas the marketing of the materials is not that great. But our main purpose is to do our part to conserve landfill space and help the environment.”

More and more, hospitals are learning that a recycling program is an environmentally efficient means of reducing solid waste costs and meeting local recycling goals. The large volumes of recyclables generated within these facilities
provide a distinct economic advantage for beginning a recycling program over smaller facilities with lower volumes.

Thomas Jefferson University Hospital: Philadelphia, PA

At Thomas Jefferson University Hospital in Philadelphia, steel and aluminum cans, glass containers and cardboard have been collected for recycling since 1990. One of the first hospitals nationwide to collect steel cans for recycling, Jefferson has recycled more than 30,000 pounds of steel cans in the past three years, saving landfill space, energy and natural resources.

“Steel cans were naturally included in the recycling program. They are found in abundance in institutions,” said Ed Barr, manager for support services for the hospital. “The majority of these cans are the one-gallon size cans used in the kitchen area. They are easy to prepare for recycling as well as transport to the recycling area.”

At the hospital, kitchen staff segregate the steel cans from the regular trash. After any food debris is rinsed out, the empty cans are collected in a bin and taken to the hospital’s recycling area. There, the cans are crushed, placed onto a utility cart, and transported to the truck that makes daily runs to the recycling center.

For institutions interested in recycling steel cans, Barr recommends first locating and processor interested in accepting steel cans. To ensure kitchen staff support, involve them in the recycling program and let them know the importance of recycling empty steel cans. One person should be appointed to be in charge of the recycling effort to get the program started and maintain momentum.

Finally, Barr recommends that the steel cans be marketed as part of a total recycling program: steel cans should be collected from the kitchen, aluminum and glass from the cafeteria, and paper from the offices.

All recyclables at the hospital are delivered to a Philadelphia transfer station. There, they are baled and shipped to end market for recycling.

At the Walt Disney World Hilton, Chief Engineer John Steele has structured a recycling program in which simplicity is the primary focus. The program includes a variety of recyclables: steel food cans, aluminum beverage cans, glass and plastic containers, newspaper, office paper, cardboard, soap, grease and other items such as carpeting.

A lot of research went into the program before it was implemented in the summer of 1990. Steele asked all hotel employees what recyclable materials they used in greatest quantities. Collection bins for the appropriate materials were then placed in the closest location possible.

In the kitchen, one-gallon steel cans are routinely recycled. The steps that the hotel follows are the same as those recommended by SRI: (1) the can is rinsed, using no extra water, (2) the lid and bottom of the can are removed, and (3) the can is crushed and placed into the storage bin along with the lids.

Steele determined that 70 percent of guests would participate in a hotel recycling program. Since he does not believe that any of the employees should have to “go through garbage,” a place card in each room asks guests to leave their recyclables on the desk or table in the room. The housekeeping staff collects the materials using a bag that hangs on the cleaning carts.

“Our guests have made very positive comments about our recycling program,” said Nadine DeGenova Kopf, director of public relations. “For example, members of a major company met in-house, and we provide them with a number of bins for their recyclable materials. They were surprised at how comprehensive our recycling program is.”

The savings have been tremendous. The year before the program was established, the hotel paid $30,000 for trash removal; the following year it paid $8,200. Since the recyclables are source separated, employees process them according to end market specifications. In the case of steel cans, they are baled.

The clank of steel cans being sorted is a sound commonly heard in material recovery facilities across the United States. The billions of cans of soup, tuna fish, vegetables, juice, pet food and other products found on kitchen shelves are a
staple in America’s recycling diet. About 93 percent of all curbside programs and 82 percent of all drop-off programs in the United States accept them for recycling.

As a result, in just eight years, the steel can recycling rate has rocketed from an estimated 15 percent in 1988 to nearly 56 percent in 1995. Among the reasons: steel cans quickly adapted to the recycling infrastructure for all steel products. Ferrous scrap processors were well-prepared to handle and process steel can scrap to end market specifications, and steel mills increasingly ate them up s low-cost, high-quality alternative scrap resource. Steel can scrap use has increased nearly every year since 1988,k and end market use in the United States mushroomed from five mills to more than 80 in the same time frame.

But as much success as the United States has experienced with steel can recycling, it is far from alone in the steel can recycling effort. In fact, the United States isn’t even the global leader of the pack.

In 1995, an estimated 73.8 percent of all steel cans were recycled in Japan, according to the Japan Used Can Treatment Association. More than one million tons of steel cans ere consumed in its fiery steel mill furnaces.

In the Netherlands, approximately 65 percent of all steel cans were recycled in 1995. The aim of the Dutch packaging chain is to achieve an 80 percent or higher recycling rate by 2001. According to industry officials, steel cans are on target to hit an 86 percent recycling rate by that time.

Of all the steel cans marketed in France in 1995, approximately 40 percent were collected and recycled. This was the result of close cooperation of all the players in the steel packaging industry. Steel cans are collected throughout the country by curbside collection and through magnetic separation at resource recovery facilities.

In South Africa, a can recovery company called Collect-A-Can was formed to recover steel cans for recycling. Collect-A-Can’s 11 depots and 16,000 collectors accept all types of steel cans, including food, beverage, paint and aerosol cans.

An estimated 44 percent were recycled in South Africa in 1995.In province of Ontario, Canada, about 74 percent of all steel cans were recycled in 1995. Enough steel cans have been recycled in Canada since 1985 to fill the interior of Toronto’s Sky dome, home to the Toronto Bluejays of Major League Baseball.

Steel can recycling has spread to all corners of the globe. Australia, Belgium, Germany, South Korea, Spain and the United Kingdom also all posted recycling rates between 11 and 67 percent in 1995.

The recycling efforts of all of these countries is strong testimony to the recyclability of steel cans and the acceptance of steel cans as a viable form of scrap by the steel industry. Steel cans are made from high quality steel. As scrap supplies tighten, melters have discovered that steel cans help alleviate this demand.

Steel food, beverage, paint and aerosol cans have proven to be a quality form of scrap for the making of new steel. Their remarkable growth and acceptance in the worldwide scrap market should be considered one of the steel industry’s greatest success stories.

Appliances designed to keep things cool, such as refrigerators, pose a special challenge for appliance recyclers: their refrigerants contain CFCs. These refrigerants are considered an ozone depleting gas, and the amendments to the Clean Air Act of 1990 prohibit the open-air venting of these gases. Special equipment must
be used to capture CFCs for recycling. Not all scrap processing yards have this equipment; instead they rely on companies like Scientific Recycling.

Refrigerants, however, are not the only recyclable collected from these appliances. The force behind the recyclability of appliances is the steel used in their bodies.

“Steel from appliances is my bottom line,” said Mike Niles, president, Scientific Recycling Inc. “When most people have no further use for an old appliance, that’s when it is most useful to me. I put a good portion of those old appliances right back to work as new steel products.”

Niles’ recycling company, which is one of the five oldest in the nation, has been processing out-of-service has been recycling appliances from Iowa and Nebraska.

The collected appliances are stored in a semi-trailer left at the drop-off sites. Once the trailer is full, the appliances are transported to the Scientific Recycling processing facility in Holman, WI. The appliances are cataloged, thereby assuring that when the appliance is recycled, the scrap processing yard can be sure it is dealing with a CFC-free appliance.

The prepared appliances are then hauled to Alter Scrap Processing, Lacrosse, WI, where they are shredded and mixed with other steel including cans, cars and construction materials. This steel is then shipped to end markets throughout the midwest.

Whether found in a hospital, military base or a restaurant, all food service facilities should follow a basic recipe for recycling empty steel food cans.

First, for basic sanitary reasons, steel food cans should be rinsed clean without wasting water. This can be accomplished by rinsing them in used dishwater or in the extra spaces of the dishwasher.

Once rinsed clean, the can should be flattened to save storage space. Of course, recycling containers can hold more flattened cans and thus have to be emptied less often, saving collection costs and tipping fees.

To flatten the can, trim the unopened end of the can and step on the body of the container. The trimmed ends are recyclable as well, so store them in a single uncrushed can or tuck them inside the flattened one. If the food service facility uses a large amount of steel cans, investing in a can crusher should be considered. These machines can crush plastic and aluminum containers as well.

Finally, place the cans in a storage container large enough to hold as many cans as generated between collections. Because of space, sanitation and outloading convenience for the hauler, this container will normally be “dockside” at the loading dock area for deliveries and pick-ups. A waste hauler can often provide a storage container for steel cans and other recyclables for commingled or source separated pick-up.

Establishing a recycling program requires more attention than the actual recycling. But by doing so, a facility can provide itself with a cost efficient means of diverting solid waste from landfills and conserving natural resources, as well as a possibility of realizing a savings in waste disposal costs.

Several communities in the Franklin Township area have had the opportunity to recycle empty steel paint and aerosol cans for about 20 years. But with the opening of the Franklin Township Recycling Center in March 1991, more than six communities are being given the same opportunity.

The Franklin Township Recycling Center accepts most types of empty steel containers for recycling from eight western Pennsylvania counties, including Allegheny, Beaver, Butler, Clarion, Fayette, Mercer, Warren and Westmoreland. As a result, the facility handles as much as 12,000 pounds of empty steel food, beverage, paint and aerosol cans a day.

“Steel paint and aerosol cans are just a recyclable as other steel cans,” said John Novalesi, the new facility’s plant manager. “there’s no reason these cans should go to a landfill if they can be recycled. I’ve always believed that if something can be recycled, it should be.”

Little needs to be done to prepare steel paint and aerosol cans for recycling. Steel paint cans must be empty, and the remaining thin coat of paint should be allowed to dry. Aerosol cans should be empty of their product and the removable plastic cap taken off; spray nozzles should not be removed.

Novalesi frequently fields questions about how to prepare steel paint cans for recycling.

“People have asked me what to do with the little bit of extra paint remaining in their cans,” said Novalesi, “ and I tell them to do what my dad used to do: mix all the different paints together into a single can and use that paint to touch up inconspicuous areas, like in the basement or the attic. Allow the remaining thin skin of paint to dry, then recycle the cans.”

In addition to steel cans, the center accepts aluminum cans, plastic and glass containers, newspaper, magazines, cardboard and high grade office paper.

Commingled recyclables are placed onto one of the four loading docks to be passed along a conveyor belt. Steel cans are then magnetically separated from the mix of recyclable material and processed into bales weighing 2,000 to 2,300 pounds. The cente4r produces five to six bales a day to be delivered to area end markets.

Franklin Township’s original recycling center was a three room structure built by Novalesi, then an Ellwood City teacher, with help of high school students from his Youth For America group. The center first accepted empty steel paint and aerosol cans for recycling in 1969.

Del Monte’s container manufacturing plant in Rochelle, Illinois is simply known as Plant No. 115. It’s recycling program, however, is not as simple as its name. A mixture of multimaterial reuse and recycling extends outward to include both its employees and residents of the surrounding community.

“It was a natural step for us to take,” said Dennis Ruehlman, a production supervisor for the plant. “Although the town of Rochelle has its own recycling program, many of our employees live in rural areas not covered by any sort of recycling program. We wanted to extend the opportunity to recycle to those people”.

Beyond recycling damaged steel cans and steel can scrap at the plant, Del Monte provides employees with recycling containers for both home and office use. By allowing recycling bins to be taken home, employees are able to store and bring steel cans and other materials to the plant for recycling. Containers for recyclables are also located at employees’ desks and work stations.

The plant accepts steel food and beverage cans, aluminum cans, cardboard, newspaper, white paper and magazines. Del Monte’s facility has opened its doors to four local elementary schools and junior high. Periodically, the schools bring bins of white paper and magazines saved by the students, faculty and staff to drop-off locations just inside the plant.

Empty steel cans and steel tinplate scrap are collected into large containers throughout the plant. Each container is emptied by a plant forklift operator. The steel cans and steel tinplate scrap are taken to AMG Resource Corporation, a detinner located in Gary, Indiana, where the cans are processed and baled. The steel can scrap is then shipped to local end markets.

In addition to recycling, the Del Monte plant also reuses slightly flawed steel cans for non-food special use. An arrangement was made between Del Monte and a nearby workshop for the developmentally disabled in Oregon, Illinois.

A number of 15-ounce cans with minor defects or flaws are set aside at the plant instead of being recycled. These cans are taken to the workshop, called the Village of Progress. There, Village employees work to turn the cans into piggy banks.

“The banks are really nice, “ said Ruehlman. “We had a large number of them produced for us with some of our antique labels dating back to 1909. We use the banks as promotional items during events such as local celebrations and the state fair.”

Like many of its predecessors, the Bath Iron Works continues Maine’s tradition of shipbuilding. Located along the banks of the Kennebec River, the half-mile long shipyard constructs primarily large naval vessels.

In January 1992, however, the Bath Iron Works began a tradition of its own: the recycling of empty steel paint and aerosol cans.

Steel paint and aerosol can scrap is generated by the shipyard because the vessels are painted during construction. A system to ensure the removal of empty, dry paint and aerosol cans from the shipyard’s solid waste stream was implemented.

Five paint dispensing centers distribute paint in cardboard holders to employees. Paint is poured into the cardboard holders, and any paint left over from construction is emptied into 55-gallon drums. Emptied paint cans are then placed into small bins and allowed to air dry. Distributed aerosol paint cans once completely empty are collected in small bins and are then returned to the dispensing center.

Daily, these bins are loaded onto a pallet and taken by forklift to the shipyard’s centrally-located processing center. The center contains a can crusher and a pair of drum compactors to store the cans for recycling. The paint cans are crushed and placed into a large roll-off. Similarly, aerosol cans are run through specialty equipment to de-pressurize and compact them into large 55-gallon drums. The drums, along with any damaged drums, and steel welding wire cans are also placed inside the roll-off.

“We process steel cans at our facility because we really don’t want to see these containers get landfilled,” said Harold Arndt, waste management administrator for the shipyard. “Besides, steel cans are fully recyclable materials and the program pays for itself.”

An empty roll-off is swapped for the full roll-off bimonthly and transported by truck to an intermediate processing facility. There, steel cans are magnetically removed from the roll-off and placed into a compactor to be baled. The baled cans are magnetically moved for shipment to domestic ad foreign end markets.