Waste Management Solutions
The following is a brief overview of waste management solutions undertaken by members of The Pew Center's Business Environmental Leadership Council (BELC).
For more information on each of these companies efforts to address climate change, please see the Businesses Leading The Way section of this Web site.
Air Products
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Air Products has successfully reduced the amount of hazardous waste generated per pound of product by more than 50%; and reduced air emissions by 60% from chemicals facilities that it acquired since 1997.
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Air Products and Chemicals entered into an agreement with a neighboring company to provide the waste stream from one of its dimethylformamide plants for use as a fuel source for that company. This arrangement reduces the neighboring facility’s energy demand and lowers the amount of CO2-forming volatile organic compounds flared by the Air Products facility.
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Air Products and Chemicals has numerous operations that recover hydrogen molecules and other waste gases from the industrial processes of other companies. Hydrogen recovery reduces the amount of natural gas that would otherwise be needed to produce hydrogen.
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Air Products also uses landfill gas to fuel a boiler at one of its operations in Cincinnati, Ohio.
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Air Products and Chemicals’ Hometown, Pennsylvania plant received the Governor’s award for Environmental Excellence for the second time in three years for reducing raw material usage, energy usage and waste generation. Among the achievements were a 1.43 million kWh reduction in electricity usage, and 200,000 miles per year reduction in transport miles associated with raw material deliveries and waste transportation.
Alcoa
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Alcoa encourages aluminum recycling by sponsoring recycling programs, operating the Alcoa Recycling Company, supporting research on recycling and alloy separation, and purchasing large amounts of scrap. Aluminum produced from recycled metal requires only 5 percent of the energy required to produce the metal from bauxite ore.
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Alcoa sponsors life-cycle analyses on a number of products, including automotive components, beverage cans, aluminum wheels, and building components, to determine where processes and product designs could be improved.
American Electric Power
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AEP has promoted the use of Coal Combustion Products (fly ash, bottom ash, boiler slag, and flue gas desulfurization scrubber materials) since the early 1950’s. In 2002 alone, AEP sold over 1.3 million tons of CCPs, utilized over 1.1 million tons for internal projects, and donated another 161,000 tons. In all, over 32 percent of CCPs were utilized, avoiding the use of substantial amounts of landfill space.
Baxter
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Baxter reduced its generation of non-hazardous waste by 14 percent per unit of production value between 1996 and 2002 and recycled 47.3 million kilograms of waste in 2002 alone. Baxter also reduced the amount of packaging used per unit of production by 15 percent between 1995 and 2002, with a 3.7 percent reduction in 2002 alone (as compared to a 1995 baseline), a reduction of 1.8 million kilograms. Baxter’s 2002 reduction alone has saved the company $2.9 million dollars.
California Portland Cement
CH2M HILL
Cinergy
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Cinergy Corp. has implemented an extensive program for the reuse of fly ash, a by-product of coal combustion. This significantly reduces the volume of materials that require land-filling, and provides a substitute for more energy-intensive materials.
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Cinergy has implemented recycling programs in its offices (for paper) and generating plants (for metals).
Cummins Inc.
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Cummins’ ReCon program facilitates the reuse and recycling of Cummins diesel and gasoline engines and components. Through the program, Cummins remanufactured 25,000 engines and over 1,000,000 diesel components in the year 2000. Each year, ReCon plants also generate approximately 3,000 tons of scrap metal for recycling each year.
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Through a voluntary recycling program, employees at Cummins’ San Luis Potosi facility were able to save the equivalent of over 9000 seven-year-old trees and over 2 million kwh of electricity.
Deutsche Telekom
Dupont
- The DuPont-Solae plant in Memphis, Tenn. uses landfill gas as a replacement for natural gas to fuel boilers and other plant equipment, replacing more than 90% of the natural gas used by the site’s boilers. The U.S. EPA has calculated that area greenhouse gas emissions have been reduced by an equivalent of the removal of 70,000 cars from the road or planting 95,000 acres of forest.
Entergy
- Entergy recycles over 70 percent of its power plant waste ash. The majority of the ash is utilized in the production of concrete. This reduces the volume of material sent to landfills and reduces the energy requirements and CO2 emissions associated with the processing of materials traditionally used to produce concrete.
- Entergy has funded a project in the eastern United States that will collect coal mine methane vented from abandoned mines and convert it to pipeline-quality gas or use it as fuel to generate electricity. The project will reduce GHG emissions by 400,000 metric tons of CO2e through 2005.
Exelon
- Landfill Gas to Energy
- Exelon continues to reduce overall greenhouse gas emissions by supporting landfill gas to energy recovery. Utilizing landfill methane to generate electricity produces less environmental impact than burning fossil fuels, and has the added benefit of capturing an energy source that otherwise would have gone to waste. Carbon dioxide (CO2) from landfill methane gas is considered biogenic, or part of the natural carbon cycle. Contrast this with the CO2 from the burning of fossil fuel, which is considered anthropogenic, or arising from human activity. Thus, when the landfill gas displaces fossil fuel, it helps reduce human-caused greenhouse gas emissions to the atmosphere.
- Exelon Power is in the final year of a two-year project to convert an oil-fired plant designed in 1950 into a 21st Century, clean operating, reliable and efficient generating station through the use of improved technology and production methods. As a result of this project, the two-unit 60 MW Fairless Hills Generating Station will be the second-largest landfill gas generating station in the U.S.; a substantial renewable energy project able to consume 100% of the landfill gas that Waste Management produces at their nearby GROWS and Tulleytown landfills; and a significant contributor to Exelon’s greenhouse gas reduction target through its consumption of landfill gas that would otherwise have been flared.
- Exelon Power also operates the 6 MW Pennsbury plant in southeastern Pennsylvania that utilizes landfill gas to generate electric power. Exelon Power was awarded a 1997 Governor's Environmental Excellence Award for its landfill gas projects.
- In addition, ComEd purchases electricity generated from landfill methane gas at 22 sites across northern Illinois. To date, Exelon landfill gas initiatives have avoided over 21 million CO2-equivalent tons of emissions.
- Coal combustion product reuse
- Exelon continues its commitment to reuse the byproducts of coal combustion at our fossil generating stations – fly ash, bottom ash, basin ash and flue gas desulfurization products – and prevent them from consuming valuable local landfill capacity. We use these materials for applications that include restoration of land contours at coal mine reclamation sites, anti-skid agents for icy roads, production of fertilizer products and waste-stabilization media.
- In 2004, we continued our commitment to reuse the large volume of products that result from burning coal. The first year that 100 percent of the fly ash, bottom ash, and basin ash and scrubber products were kept out of local landfills was 2002. That accomplishment included more than 137,000 tons of ash materials and just over 21,600 tons of byproducts from the SO2 scrubbing process. Greater demand for power in 2003 increased that challenge to 175,700 tons of ash products and 28,800 tons of scrubber byproducts, and the challenge was met.
- By the end of 2004, Exelon produced more than 153,700 tons of ash products, along with approximately 34,500 tons of scrubber byproducts. Again, our goal to reuse 100 percent of these products was met.
- Measuring the value of recycling programs
- Exelon maintains recycling programs to collect and reuse a wide range of materials. These programs provide measurable value by the reduction of waste and waste disposal costs, as well as through the sale of recycled material.
- A corporate team that includes members from each Exelon company tracks the current recycling programs and identifies opportunities for additional cost savings through waste minimization and new recycling programs. The team’s work led to the establishment of a corporate wide initiative to increase the recycling of municipal waste and reduce generation of hazardous waste, thereby creating additional cost savings.
- During 2004, Exelon generated nearly $4 million in operational savings through material recycling.
Hewlett-Packard
Holcim
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Holcim is working within existing material specification standards to replace cement clinker with mineral components such as fly ash, a waste material from coal-burning electric utilities, and slag, a waste by-product of steel manufacturing. Each ton of clinker eliminated avoids one ton of CO2 emissions that would have resulted from its manufacture. The company has eliminated 400,000 tons of CO2 as a result of clinker-factor reductions, and is working with government agencies and construction material specifiers to encourage further use of lower clinker-factor cements in concrete.
IBM
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IBM reduced its amount of total nonhazardous waste generated in 2002 by 7.8 percent compared to 2001. Of the waste generated in 2002, 78 percent was recycled. Hazardous waste generation indexed to output decreased by 14.2 percent in 2002, with a total quantity reduction of 28.5 percent.
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Over the past 5 years, IBM’s total hazardous waste has decreased by 75.7 percent, and has decreased by 94 percent since 1987.
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IBM recycled approximately 78 percent of its non-hazardous waste and 54 percent of its hazardous waste in 2002.
Intel
- Intel recycled 59 percent of its hazardous waste generated worldwide and 73 percent of its solid waste generated worldwide in 2003.
- Additionally, paper with 30 percent recycled content was purchased for all its U.S. copiers and printers.
Interface Inc.
- Interface has reduced its carpet and textile solid waste sent to landfill by over 34% since 1996 through waste reduction programs and expanded recycling and reuse programs.
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Interface also uses post-consumer materials otherwise destined for landfills, to manufacture its products, (e.g. soda bottles are used to manufacture Terratex® fabric).
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Interface also accepts post-industrial and post-consumer carpet and diverts it from the landfill using it for product or waste to energy. In 2004, Interface diverted 17 million pounds of carpet from landfills.
SC Johnson
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SC Johnson has achieved more than a 90 percent recycling rate across its global operations since 1990. In 2003, SC Johnson reduced combined air emissions, water effluents, and solid wastes per kilogram of product produced by over 15 percent compared to its year-2000 baseline.
Toyota
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Toyota has reduced the amount of hazardous waste going to landfills from its plants by 40 percent since 2000 and its non-hazardous waste by 11 percent.
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In 2003, Toyota implemented a nationwide, web-based waste tracking system to better collect and analyze waste-related data to enable further reductions throughout Toyota’s North American manufacturing and distribution operations.
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Toyota is also increasing the use of reusable packaging in shipments to distributors.
TransAlta
- TransAlta, along with Ontario Power Generation, has contributed to carbon emissions reductions of over 20,000 metric tons by selling flyash to regional concrete and cement producers.
United Technologies
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United Technologies reduced its domestic hazardous waste production by 41 percent between 1999 and 2002.
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The company set a goal in 1998 to reduce recycled waste by 35 percent and non-recycled waste by 60 percent by 2007.
Weyerhaeuser
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Weyerhaeuser collected for recycling more than 6.7 million tons of paper in 2004, approximately 13% of the paper recovered in the U.S. and enough to fill more than 130,000 freight cars. Typical recyclables include old corrugated containers, office wastepaper, old newspapers and printing papers. More than 4 million tons of the recycled material Weyerhaeuser collects is used in its mills to make new paper. The rest is sold to customers around the world. Recycled fiber comprises about 35 percent of the content of new Weyerhaeuser paper, as averaged across all grades of paper produced by the company.
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Every Weyerhaeuser manufacturing facility that generates residuals and/or solid waste has developed strategies and implemented programs to manage, eliminate or reduce the production of solid wastes. Weyerhaeuser beneficially reuses residuals in making its own products, ships them off site for use in the making of other products or converts them to energy.
Wisconsin Energy Corporation
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Wisconsin Energy Corporation utilizes fly ash, municipal wastewater, and paper mill sludge to produce a patented construction product, replacing fossil fuel generation and reducing the amount of solids placed in landfills. In 2002, the company beneficially used 96 percent of these combustion products, compared to a national average of 31.5 percent in 2001.