Pollution prevention: A key to economic sustainability

Metal services industry

The steps in the manufacturing of metal products—machining operations, parts cleaning and stripping, surface treatment, plating, and paint application—produce wastes that must be handled properly to avoid harming the environment or compromising the health of workers and the public. The metal services industry uses numerous hazardous materials in the plating and coating of metal including cadmium, chromium, cyanide, lead, mercury, and selenium. Estimates say that these materials contribute almost 50% of all metals found in wastewater treatment plant sludges. As a result, USEPA Region 2 has focused much of its P2 and waste minimization activities on the metal services industry.

The agency has, for instance, been very active in promoting the National Strategic Goals Program (SGP) for metal finishers in New York and New Jersey. SGP is a cooperative effort between USEPA and stakeholders, including states, publicly-owned treatment works (POTWs), and metal finishers' associations. The program is voluntary and includes commitments by industry to go beyond compliance with respect to baseline environmental standards and to substantially reduce pollution from their operations. In turn, participants receive official recognition as an environmentally effective SGP facility. Participants sign a simple "statement of commitment" agreeing to support the provisions of SGP; that is, to meet specific P2 goals. To date,

Currently, USEPA is in the final stages of developing, with NYSDEC and other stakeholders, the SGP for New York. This program should be launched before summer 2000. The agency also developed a framework document to implement the SGP in New Jersey, and that document has received full endorsement by all stakeholder groups including the state, POTWs, and industry. We are now in the process of beginning implementation of the SGP in New Jersey.

Furthermore, to help metal finishers achieve the goals of the SGP and to reduce the quantity of the most persistent bioaccumulative and toxic (PBT) chemicals found in the hazardous waste, USEPA Region 2, in a joint effort with USEPA Region 3, recently held two P2/waste minimization workshops. The first was held in Pottstown-Fort Washington, Pennsylvania in October 1999; the second was in New Brunswick, New Jersey in February 2000. These workshops can help metal finishers reduce waste through improvement in their process efficiency and the implementation of best management practices by plating line operators. The workshops included a visit to a metal finishing plant and covered all aspects of the plating process including the racking, drying, draining, and rinsing. We are planning to hold similar workshops in New York in the future.

Finally, in addition to our involvement in the SGP, USEPA Region 2, for the last 3 years, has performed P2 audits or assessments at metal finishing plants in conjunction with pretreatment sampling inspections. The essential first step in developing a waste reduction strategy is a comprehensive waste audit that identifies all operations that produce waste and the areas where waste may be reduced. Our assessments cover good housekeeping practices, operational changes, equipment modifications, and raw material modifications.

Federal facilities

Foley Sq. federal office building

The federal government itself has a wide array of agencies and missions. Facilities range from military bases and veterans hospitals to national parks, forests, federal prisons, post offices, and even the U.S. Mint. These facilities both generate pollutants and buy and use great quantities of goods and services. Therefore, federal agencies strive to set an example of good environmental management.

For instance, the Foley Square Federal Office Building at 290 Broadway in New York City which houses USEPA Region 2, the IRS, and the FBI recently achieved status as an Energy Star Building, the national symbol for energy efficiency. Working with the local utility company and the building developer, the General Services Administration (GSA) has successfully demonstrated that energy efficient buildings can be developed by the federal government within federal guidelines and budgets using off-the-shelf technology. Furthermore, the equipment and products implemented throughout the building have enabled GSA to realize an annual cost savings of $1.3 million! Notable energy efficient and cost-effective equipment used in the building includes a building energy management system, T-8 lighting fixtures, steam turbine centrifugal chillers, high-efficiency motors, and a variable air volume air-handling system.

P2 partnerships have also been established between the Department of Defense (DOD), USEPA Region 2, NJDEP, and NYSDEC to recognize and promote P2 as the standard way of doing business in Region 2. These partnerships are an opportunity for DOD installations in New Jersey and New York, large and small, to discuss military P2 initiatives with state and federal environmental agencies in a non-adversarial forum. USEPA Region 2 has also been working with civilian federal agencies to promote P2 in operations, purchasing decisions, and policies. In March 1999, for example, USEPA Region 2 co-sponsored a federal facility environmental workshop on "Implementing Pollution Prevention" with USEPA Region 3 and the U.S. Coast Guard Training Center in Cape May, New Jersey. This workshop showed environmental managers at civilian federal facilities how to perform a pollution prevention assessment, develop a pollution prevention plan, and implement an effective P2 program.

“Compliance assistance from USEPA”

In addition, a roundtable for federal managed health care facilities in the New York City area was held in February 2000 regarding the use of mercury. Although mercury has many unique properties and critical applications, it poses a health risk. Hospital incinerators are the fourth largest source of industrial mercury emissions. Many commonly used instruments and products contain mercury including thermometers, blood pressure monitoring devices, esophageal dilators, and staining solutions. Hospitals are encouraged to purchase instruments and products without mercury when possible. When products containing mercury are unavoidable, they must be disposed of carefully. USEPA plans to extend this program to the private sector.

Pharmaceutical industry

Many pharmaceutical manufacturing plants operate in Region 2: ten in New York, fifteen in New Jersey, and eighteen in Puerto Rico. They typically use large quantities of solvents and other hazardous pollutants. According to the Toxic Release Inventory (TRI) Public Release Data for 1997, the pharmaceutical industry in Region 2 released almost 5 million lb of pollutants into the environment and generated almost 47 million lb of additional waste.

As a result, USEPA Region 2 has been working with the pharmaceutical industry to reduce releases of toxic pollutants and hazardous waste generation by promoting pollution prevention and waste minimization techniques. We are conducting P2 assessments of pharmaceuticals located in the Barceloneta/Manati area of Puerto Rico to determine ways to improve the recovery of a viable product which can be reused in pharmaceutical manufacturing processes. P2 assessments have already been performed at Schering Plough, Abbott, and Upjohn; assessments at Bristol Meyers Squibb are scheduled. USEPA plans to publish a training guide for the industry in the near future.

Agriculture

USEPA supports state agencies involved in demonstration projects through the Pollution Prevention Incentives for States (PPIS) program. USEPA recently gave a grant to the New Jersey State Soil Conservation Committee to implement collaborative nonregulatory approaches to reducing agrochemicals. The integrated crop management (ICM) approach encompasses a combination of agricultural production practices that minimize waste and pollution yet maintain yields and quality. In general, farmers' uses of ICM techniques are not driven by the P2 program's goal of protecting water quality but by their desire to reduce chemical and labor costs and still produce a quality crop. Farmers must, therefore, consider the economic threshold of an approach for each field, weighing treatment costs against lost revenue from pest damage.

Several workshops were held for farmers in the New Jersey counties of Sussex, Somerset, Burlington, and Salem supplemented by training and outreach to individual operators. Farmers received assistance in calibrating farm machinery, including corn planters and manure spreaders, to assure that the correct amount of seed was planted to take advantage of the fertilizer available in the soil. When potato leaf hoppers exceeded a threshold, farmers in the project began to harvest their alfalfa rather than spray pesticides. Farmers with corn borer problems rotated their infested field to soybeans the next growing season instead of applying an insecticide to the field. Additionally, mating disruption was used, a technique that distributes synthetic insect sex pheromone making it impossible for male insects to find female insects, thus reducing insecticide use.

Learn more about these programs. Click here, or contact USEPA, 290 Broadway, New York, NY 10007, 212-637-4083 or -3730.

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Kathleen Malone is in the Compliance Assistance and Program Support Branch and Deborah Freeman is with the Strategic Planning and Multimedia Programs Branch of USEPA, Region 2.