U.S. Inc. On A Waste-Trimming Diet

U.S. industry produces nearly 300 million tons of hazardous waste annually, and spends hundreds of millions of dollars each year trying to treat it, carry it away, bury it, or otherwise get rid of it. And as the amont of waste--and the cost of dealing with it--rises, corporate America is beginning to search for a better approach. Increasingly, industry is shifting its attention from treating and storing what comes out of the "pipe," to reducing the amount of waste produced in the first place. Leading the way in waste minimization are large companies that can afford to initiate reduction programs--and which have the most at stake in their public image. Dow Chemical, Du Pont, 3M, IBM, and Monsanto are just a few of the firms that are taking the lead. Recent legislation is an important impetus for these programs. Under the 1984 Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, for example, Congress required that all generators of hazardous waste institute a waste minimization policy). But these corporations protest that most of their activities have been entirely voluntary. "We've been doing this far longer than any legislation has been in effect," says Joe Lindsly, manager of waste reduction for Dow USA. "And we're going to press on with or without legislative pressure." Regardless of initial motivation, however, the firms have found a number of bottom-line incentives for continuing waste reduction practices. Among them: cost savings, lower liability risk, public relations, and employee morale. At 3M, for instance, where the "Pollution Prevention Pays" program was established in 1975, 2,261 projects have produced an annual cost savings of over $400 million. One project, conceived by two engineers at the 3M plant in Hilden, West Germany, focused on a new, fully automated way to clean mixing tanks. The new method does a better, faster job while requiring only a fraction of the hazardous cleansing solvent used previously. Not only does this cut down on the liquid waste produced in the cleaning process, but the savings in the price of solvent paid for the new system within a year. In a different sector of the minimization effort at 3M, that of resource recovery, manager Bud Shaver says that for every dollar his department has spent this year, the company has seen a return of $56. To date, however, this increased activity has not necessarily meant new opportunity for scientists. None of these corporations have built large waste management staffs, nor are they recruiting substantially from outside their own companies. Rather, they seem to consider waste a "family affair," and are achieving their goals with existing personnel. At Dow, for instance, Lindsly's network consists of waste reduction managers at each of Dow's divisions and, under them, at each of the Dow plants. Lindsly, himself a nine-year veteran in production at Dow, stresses that his entire network is staffed with Dow employees: process engineers, production personnel, and scientists. "It gives them a credibility in working with the plant staff," he says, "because they've been there, and they are there." Some executives, however, do see increased hiring ahead. "It's getting pretty competitive when you do look for people to hire," says John Rosenblum, senior environmental engineer at National Semiconductor Corp. "I've heard of companies in Silicon Valley advertising for people in Denver and Miami. Everyone's going through it." Chip makers, for instance, need scientists and engineers able to rethink production so that chemicals such as xylene, a hazardous solvent that evaporates and is emitted into the air as a gas, isn't relied upon so heavily. Despite the ambitious programs at a relatively few companies, however, statistics show that their efforts have yet to rub off on industry as a whole. In 1985, Inform, a New-York-based environmental research organization, surveyed 29 organic chemical plants to determine how much was being done to reduce or eliminate waste. Oceanographer David Sarokin, who ran the study, says that the results weren't too impressive. "We saw lots of PR from a few select companies," Sarokin says, "but when we actually looked at the data, we saw very little in the area of waste reduction." But Jim Lounsbury, director of waste minimization at the Environmental Protection Agency in Washington, D.C., thinks that things may be looking up. His staff is just finishing two surveys of hazardous waste generators, one of 10,000 industrial facilities and the other of 20,000. Though the data has not yet been compiled--Lounsbury expects to start getting quantititive results sometime in 1989--he says that the practice of minimization is beginning to catch on. "Over the past year in particular, the number of conferences on waste minimization across government and industry has increased dramatically," he says. "A year ago, as I made presentations at these conferences, I would recognize most of the same faces from conference to conference. Now the number of people attending has multiplied tremendously, and I recognize very few. This signifies at least a heightened awareness to the options presented by waste minimization." BY JEFFREY MERVIS WASHINGTON--Environmental problems have become so pervasive, that such complex issues as toxic wastes, global warming, and depletion of the ozone layer have become the topics of casual conversation among an otherwise scientifically illiterate public. And yet the one government agency that is supposed to protect the U.S. public from these threats has been prevented from doing its job, many scientists believe. The Reagan Administration cut the Environmental Protection Agency's research staff by more than 20%, and dealt even more harshly with the agency's R&D budget, cutting it by one-third before gradually allowing it to return to the still-meager levels of the Carter administration. This week, however, marks the beginning of the George Bush presidency. And environmental advocates are eager to put the setbacks of the past behind them. No fewer than three major reports have appeared since last fall outlining the direction that the new administration must take to tackle dozens of thorny issues. With respect to waste management, the messages of these reports are remarkably consistent: EPA must get away from regulating pollution after it has been produced and instead take steps to encourage its prevention. One way to do that, say environmental experts, is for EPA to support more research and to strengthen its ties with the scientific community. A report by the agency's own science advisory board, entitled "Future Risk: Research Strategies for the 1990s," proposes that an Environmental Research Institute set up along the lines of the National Institutes of Health. The report also recommends a doubling of EPA's research budget, to $700 million, over the next five years and calls on the agency to "increase the numbers and sharpen the skills of the scientists and engineers who conduct environmental research." Such increased efforts couldn't come too soon for scientists like Robert Ham, a municipal waste landfill expert. "EPA has dropped the ball on municipal waste," says the University of Wisconsin professor of civil and environmental engineering. "In the past 10 years all the advances have come from private industry and from foreign governments." That neglect, he notes, has slowed progress on such problems as reducing toxic air emissions from incineration, and disposing of hazardous incinerator ash in landfills. And it has helped fuel bitter debates over the safety of incinerators and landfills. "You can't assure people that you know what you're doing," says Ham about his appearances at public hearings on proposals to build new landfills. "We just don't have the data." Even as meager budgets have hampered EPA efforts to clean up waste, they have also prevented the agency from tackling the problem of waste at its roots. Environmental scientists now agree that the best strategy for dealing with pollution is preventing it in the first place rather than regulating it. And they are urging the new administration to foster innovative new methods of prevention. "We must recognize that there really is no more `away' where we can throw things," declares a report, entitled "Blueprint for the Environment," given to Bush last month by a coalition of 30 environmental groups. "The new administration," it adds, "should make waste reduction and recycling a national imperative." That's also the message of a third new report, called Project 88. A private sector study backed by Sens. Timothy Wirth (D-Colo.) and John Heinz (R-Pa.), the report urges the federal government to foster recycling programs in local communities. The economic and environmental advantages of recycling over other methods of disposal will become clear, notes the study's director, Harvard economist Robert Stavins, "once you allow recycling to compete in the market." Stavins believes the new administration will be a stronger advocate of reducing waste and protecting the environment than was the Reagan administration. "Both Reagan and Bush are in favor of encouraging economic incentives," he notes about the thrust of many of his group's proposals. "But the previous administration's way of making that happen was to not enforce the law. I think the Bush team is more likely to be strong on the environmental aspects of the issue as well as the economic ones."

U.S. Inc. On A Waste-Trimming Diet

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