Resource Management in the New Millennium

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Resource Management in the New Millennium

• Richard V. Anthony

Richard Anthony Associates
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Why Resource Management?
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Ancient Culture

• Code of Hammurabi
• Old and New Testament Rules
• Early Civilization

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American Culture 1800

• American Indian
• Pioneer Ethic
• Quilting Bees
• Refillable Glass Containers, Mason Canning Jars

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American Culture 1900

• Junk Yards, Yard Sales
• Hog Farms and Collection of Putresables
• Required Source Separation prior to the End of
  WWII

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It Should be the Law

• Navigable Rivers Act, Late 1800
• Rachel Carson, Silent Spring
• Open Burning Dumps, Untreated Sewage and
  Industrial Discharges into Oceans, Rivers, Lakes,
  and Air
• Clean Air and Clean Water Acts

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Federal Law
Solid Waste Management Act, Resource Recovery
Act

• Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (1976)
  Hazardous Waste
• Standards for Land Disposal
• Special Wastes (Medical, Tires)
• Resource Recovery and Recycling Education and
  Training

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International Law

• Montreal Protocol
• Kyoto Agreement

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California Law

• Solid Waste Management and Resource Recovery Act
  (1974), Integrated Waste Management Act (1989)
• Establish Hierarchy of Waste Source Reduction,
  Recycling, Composting, Transformation and Land
  Disposal
• Required 50 diversion of base year waste
  generated by year 2000

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AB 2020 (Beverage Container Recycling Act) AND
AB 322 (Expanded Beverage Container Recycling
Act)

• Requires deposits on beverage containers
• Requires redemption centers
• Provides a grant program

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It Makes Good Sense

• Thomas Malthus the consequences of the increasing
  gap between rich and poor
• Karl Marx the ultimate result of the gap is
  revolution and the redistribution of wealth.
• Club of Rome Study, Meadows
• Mend our ways or nature will force us

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Managing Our Resources

• Old Way extracts from environment and dump waste
  back into the environment.
• New Way is to close the loop and make
  environmental dumping illegal or expensive

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Close the Loop

Black Hole
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Close the Loop
Black Hole
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Efficiency in Managing Resources

• Matter and energy are constants EMC2
• There is no away
• No such thing as a free lunch

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Zero Waste

• Zero Waste goals (efficiency)
• Create Jobs from Discards
• End Welfare for Wasting (level the playing
  field)

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Responsibility

• Consumer Responsibility (what you buy)
• Producer Responsibility

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New Millennium Rules

• 6 Rs

• Reduce (source reduction)
• Redesign
• Repair (fix)
• Reuse (durable vs. Single use i.e., cameras,
  napkins)
• Recycle (everything else)
• Regulate

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A Zero Waste Approach to Jobs and Sustainability
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A Zero Waste System has a Place for Everything
Vesilind?Worrell?Reinhart, Solid Waste Engineering
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For Proper Resource Management and Public
Health, Industry Needs to Redesign Products and
Packages for Reuse, Repair and Recycling
MFR. Plant
Black Hole
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All Materials Found Today at the Incinerator or
Landfill can be Sorted into 12 Categories

• Reusable
• Paper
• Plant Debris
• Putrescibles
• Wood
• Ceramics

• Soils
• Metals
• Glass
• Polymers
• Textiles
• Chemicals

These categories and the following definitions
have been developed by Dr. Daniel Knapp, Urban
Ore, Berkeley, California 94710
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Reusable Goods.

• .are discarded materials that are useful in
  their present form.
• Examples are doors, windows, furniture, lighting,
  household goods, clothing, bricks, live plants,
  etc.
• Reuse operators need covered space, and enough
  room to organize, display, and sell all reuse
  items coming to the facility. They will also need
  to dismantle, clean, upgrade and store unsaleable
  merchandise for recycling.

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Reusable Goods.
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Reusable Goods.
Average of Total Market Price per Ton
6 400
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Paper.

• .is one of the largest commodity sub flows,
  comes in many forms, from newsprint to cardboard,
  all valuable for their fiber content.
• Paper collection and processing requires
  warehousing and sorting facilities, a baler, a
  forklift, and trucking.

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Paper.
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Paper.
Average of Total Market Price per Ton
21 100
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Plant Debris .

• .is another large sub flow, plant debris
  includes tree limbs and tree rounds, brush,
  weeds, grass clippings, and leaves.
• Plant debris operators need room to store green
  materials until they are dry enough to be fed
  into a grinding process.
• After grinding, plant debris may be screened,
  windrowed, turned, watered, and eventually
  blended with other nutrients and minerals into
  various types and grades of soil amendments.
• Composting plant debris and tilting it into soil
  is a carbon sink, a potential remedy to global
  warming.

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Plant Debris .
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Plant Debris .
Average of Total Market Price per Ton
3 35
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Putrescibles .

• .are similar chemically to plant debris, but
  differ in their high nutrient value, which makes
  them a magnet for scavenger species of birds,
  mammals, and insects.
• Special handling requirements may include rapid
  mixing and dispersing with plant debris,
  containerizing for aerobic or anaerobic
  decomposition, and odor control.
• This includes food and sludge.

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Putrescibles .
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Putrescibles .
Average of Total Market Price per Ton
26 35
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Wood.

• .may initially be divided into three streams
  reusable/resalable, recyclable/ unpainted, and
  painted.
• Reusable wood includes, doors, cabinets,
  dimensional lumber, furniture and plywood.
• Recyclable wood is usually chipped or ground,
  manufactured into particleboard, or blended with
  other ingredients into compost.
• Painted and treated wood may require special
  handling due to entrained metals and other
  toxins.

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Wood.
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Wood.
Average of Total Market Price per Ton
2 15
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Ceramics.

• .are hard, brittle materials such as stone,
  concrete, china tile and asphalt.

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Ceramics.
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Ceramics.
Average of Total Market Price per Ton
10 15
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Soils.

• .are generated by road and foundation
  construction and by dredging.
• Clean soils can be sold for fill or added to
  compost blends to produce a more mineralized
  product.
• Soils contaminated by petrochemicals can often be
  cleaned up through bioremediation.

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Soils.
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Soils.
Average of Total Market Price per Ton
6 15
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Metals.

• .have been recycled for thousands of years so
  the metals recycling industry recognizes hundred
  of subcategories, most based on complex alloys of
  two or more elemental metals such as iron,
  aluminum and copper.
• Metals have a very large and varied reuse
  component.
• Metals are also recycled extensively most new
  steel for example is recycled from old steel.

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Metals.
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Metals.
Average of Total Market Price per Ton
9 80
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Glass.

• .comes to disposal facilities in two major sub
  flows plate glass and container glass.
• Plate glass may be used as if, if unbroken, or
  recycled into fiberglass or sand.
• Container glass may be color sorted, then ground
  up and made into new containers or simply made
  into sand.

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Glass.
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Glass.
Average of Total Market Price per Ton
4 25
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Polymers.

• .are carbon-based compounds manufactured into
  films or rigid forms such as containers or
  computer cases.
• By comparison with other master categories,
  polymer recycling is a very young industry
  experiencing multiple growing pains.
• Resin complexity and incompatibility,
  contamination, and heat history are primary
  limiting factors.

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Polymers.
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Polymers.
Average of Total Market Price per Ton
9 150
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Textiles.

• .are fabrics woven from natural or synthetic
  fibers into objects such as clothing, bedding,
  carpeting, draperies, and upholstery.
• The textile reuse and recycling industry is very
  old and well developed, with worldwide markets
  for everything from old Levis to wiping cloths
  and paper.

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Textiles.
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Textiles.
Average of Total Market Price per Ton
3 20
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Chemicals.

• . includes unused paints, used oils and
  solvents, cleaners, acids and bases and the like.
  Deemed safe for their designated used, they
  become major pollutants when land filled or
  burned.
• Reuse is a preferred disposal option for many
  chemicals.
• Recycling requires filtration, distillation,
  mixing, or other refining operations to produce
  useful products

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Chemicals.
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Chemicals.
Average of Total Market Price per Ton
1 200
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Master Category Clusters and Processing Centers

• Master Category Clusters
• Paper and Containers
• Paper, metals, glass, polymers
• Organics
• Food, vegetative debris, food dirty paper, paper,
  plant debris, putrescibles, wood
• Discarded items
• Furniture, appliances, clothing, toys, tools,
  reusable goods, textiles
• Special discards
• Chemicals, construction and demolition materials,
  wood, ceramics, soils

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Master Category Clusters and Processing Centers

• Processing Centers
• Recyclables Papers, plastic, glass and metal
  containers
• Organics Food, vegetative debris, food paper,
  putrescibles, untreated wood and sheetrock
• Reuse Repair Reuse, repair, dismantling,
  reconditioning, re-manufacturing and resale of
  furniture, appliances, electronics, textiles,
  toys, tools, metal and ceramic plumbing fixtures,
  lighting, lumber, and other used building
  materials
• Metals Scrap metals and auto bodies
• Inert Rock, soils, concrete, asphalt, brick,
  land clearing debris, and mixed construction and
  demolition materials
• Household Hazardous Wastes Used motor oil,
  paint, pesticides, cleaners, and other chemicals

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Job Creation
Type of Operation Jobs per 10,000 TPY Type of Operation Jobs per 10,000 TPY
Product Reuse
Computer reuse 296
Textile Reclamation 85
Misc. Durable Reuse 62
Wooden Pallet Repair 28
Recycling-Based Manufacturers 25
Paper Mills 18
Glass Product Manufacturers 26
Plastic Product Manufacturers 93
Conventional Materials Recovery Facilities 10
Composting 4
Landfill and Incineration 1
Source Institute for Local Self-Reliance,
Washington DC, 1997 Wasting and Recycling in
the United States 2000 GrassRoots Recycling
Network, Prepared by Brenda Platt and Neil Seldman
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Our Resources Are Not Infinite
Richard Anthony Associates