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All That Junk
Spurred by stricter laws, Connecticut companies get creative about recycling
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Business New Haven
3/22/1999
By: Fiona Phelan
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In the nine years that the state has required businesses to recycle certain products, most have gone above and beyond the statutory nine items and found innovative and sometimes even profitable ways to recycle materials used in the line of business.
Computers and electronics are being stripped down and removed of their precious metals; toner cartridges are being remanufactured instead of thrown away after a single use;
office machinery is being reclaimed by manufacturers and re-used for new products.
Even state agencies are getting involved and giving priority to purchasing products that are not only recyclable, but re-manufactured.
Earlier this month, the House Environment Committee held a public hearing on a bill proposal that “would prohibit the purchase by the state of products by manufacturers which act to inhibit the recycling or remanufacture of its product by stipulation or incentives and to give priority in state purchasing to remanufactured products.”
What this bill aims to do, according to proponent State Rep. Patricia M. Widlitz (D-98) of Guilford, is to require the state to purchase products from companies that actively promote the recycling of their products. Widlitz is also vice chair of the environment committee.
The bill, she notes, grew out of research on Lexmark International Inc., which manufactures printers. Lexmark, according to Widlitz and Branford businessman Mark Winik, has a program in which discourages consumers from recycling a printer's toner cartridge.
According to Winik, president of Laser Image, Lexmark offers consumers a choice of toner cartridge at two different prices. In one package the price of the cartridge includes up-front rebate, or “pre-bate. “In another, slightly higher priced package, the cartridge is not discounted. The pre-bated item, Winik states, can only be sent back to Lexmark for recycling or remanufacturing; it cannot be taken to another vendor such as Winik's company for remanufacturing.
“We are a young industry, but we are one of the fastest-growing industries, primarily due to the growing use of computers,” Winik stated in testimony before the House Committee on the Environment. “We serve a crucial need for today's consumers.
“Our existence is now being threatened by large corporations like Lexmark, which are seeking to end recyclable cartridges and give consumers only one choice: single-use cartridges,” he added.
“If large corporations and consumers have no incentive to recycle, millions of non-biodegradable plastic cartridges will flood our landfills, increasing our trash and waste problems, and threatening our quality of life,” said Winik. “There will be a heavy economic cost as well: Without competition from recycling, cartridge costs to the consumer will dramatically rise.
“If someone offers a rebate on a product up front, or 'pre-bate,'” says Widlitz, “there's no incentive for the consumer to recycle. That's not good for our landfills and that's not good for small businesses that survive on remanufacturing certain types of products.”
According to Widlitz, several other states have proposed legislation that prohibits the state from purchasing products that cannot be remanufactured. For instance, she adds, Massachusetts has a law that bans the use of single-use toner cartridge from being purchased by state agencies. Similar laws are pending in New York, Texas, Missouri, Wisconsin, Minnesota and California.
However, according to Lexmark, Operation ReSource, the company's program to recycle used print cartridges for its laser printers, has eliminated more than 400 tons of materials from entering landfill space since the program's inception in 1991.
Lexmark officials say that the pre-bate program has not been properly explained to people. “I think it's a misunderstanding of our program and the options that customers have,” says Phyliss Liebman, manager of community enterprise for Lexmark. “The return rate on this program is about 50 percent. That tells us that a number of people are still choosing the non-prebated item and recycling their cartridge through their local remanufacturer.
“We are not landfilling these products; we have never done that,” Liebman adds. “Lexmark feels that the prebate is a way to encourage more customers to recycle our product.” When the product is remanufactured and re-sold it is packaged in recycled materials and clearly labeled as a remanufactured product, she adds.
“From the day this company was founded the people here wanted to promote good environmental stewardship,” Liebman adds. “The culture that has been built here is one of environmental responsibility. We take recycling very seriously. Taking our product back when it is spent closes the production loop for us.”
In Connecticut, businesses are required to recycle glass food and beverage containers, lead-acid batteries from vehicles, newspaper, corrugated cardboard, metal food and beverage containers (cans), white office paper, leaves, scrap metal, used motor oil and nickel-cadmium batteries.
When the state first mandated recycling, the goal was to require recycling of 25 percent of the state's solid-waste stream by January 1, 1991. In 1993, the legislature extended that goal to 40 percent by the year 2000.
In addition, the state has taken a pro-active role in promoting market development for recyclables, encouraging state agencies to purchase products made from recycled products.
Still, according to Simone Mason, recycling program coordinator for the city of New Haven, more companies, particularly smaller ones, need to comply with the law.
“It's my job to make sure that everyone in New Haven is recycling - the law applies to all companies, big and small,” Mason says. “I am here to help educate the public and help companies set up a recycling program.
“A lot of times businesses and homeowners are complying and it's the haulers who are not complying with the law,” she notes. “It costs the hauler money to recycle; they have to provide more services so maybe they need more help. It's another operating expense and they're not all willing to comply.”
Of course, the state can impose fines on haulers and businesses that do not comply with the recycling laws. And enforcement of those laws is being stepped up, according to Denny Donahue, chairman of the Connecticut Business Environmental Council (CBEC).
The Connecticut Resource Recovery Authority (CRRA) has recently, voluntarily, added on-site inspectors at the state's six waste-to-energy plants. These inspectors, notes Donahue, have the authority to impose fines on any business or individual that they discover is not complying with the state's recycling laws.
Meanwhile, CBEC offers a free waste review service for business trying to establish a good recycling program. With funding from CRRA, CBEC has hired six part-time employees who make on-site visits and determine what products can be recycled.
As part of the review, CBEC provides desktop recycling containers for office paper, along with bilingual stickers that make it clear which type of product goes in each recycling bin. Waste review services can be requested by calling CBEC at 800-611-CBEC.
“We go in and look at what a business is putting in its trash,” says Donahue. “Then we help them establish a program to put things in the right place.
“A lot of time the problems businesses encounter with recycling come from the sources that remove the trash at the end of the day or week - the office cleaning service not putting things in the right bin, or the hauler just dumping all the stuff in together,” adds Donahue.
Big corporations, such as those that supported CBEC when it was first created by DEP in 1992, have implemented wide-ranging recycling programs for products not required by DEP.
For instance, Stamford-based Pitney Bowes has had what the company calls an “end-of-life” program since 1991. Through the company's Product Disposition Program, Pitney Bowes service representatives collect scrapped or outdated equipment from customers and return it to a central location here in Connecticut.
At this Newtown site, the equipment is disassembled and recycled. Many of these scrapped materials, note company officials, still contain usable parts and materials with value.
“To our customers the program is seamless,” says Joe Shimsky, executive director for corporate safety and environmental affairs at Pitney Bowes. “When it's time to replace their existing Pitney Bowes equipment the service representatives remove the old product and replace it with the new. There's no hassle for the customer to find a way to dispose of the product.
“The whole program is based on the company's concept of sustainable development,” he adds. “We believe we have three bottom lines - economic, social and environmental. If you're going to return a product for recycling it makes sense to send it back to the company that produced it. That company is going to be the one that knows what materials went in to the product and the best way to re-use or dispose of the product. There are no guarantees that the product will be recycled with a third party involved.
“We don't put anything in the trash,” Shimsky adds. “Our goal is zero to the landfill.”
Companies like Pitney Bowes and Lexmark see recycling their products as an obligation that comes with producing the item. However, for those companies that don't want to make that commitment, or can't, there are plenty of third party-businesses that can, and will.
Colt Refining has been in the business of precious metal reclamation for almost 22 years - long before the state had any type of recycling program. The company operates a 24,000-square-foot facility in New Haven and a 40,000-square-foot facility in New Hampshire.
In Connecticut, the company strips out metals such as copper and aluminum from electronic circuit boards and finds a market for them. In New Hampshire, Colt subsidiary Electronic Processing Associates Inc. handles environmentally sensitive equipment such as computer monitors that can't be landfilled.
“To an individual these components have no value; it's not cost-effective for them to try and find a way to recycle them,” notes Colt Refining President Harvey Gottlieb. “But we deal in truckloads of these things, and we have markets for them.”
Very often, Gottlieb notes, the materials stripped out of the electronics Colt receives are sold back to the company that manufactured the product for reuse. Reusing or remanufacturing, Gottlieb believes, will be the trend of the future. He envisions that in the future U.S. companies will be required to start taking back their own products for re-use - just like their European competitors.
However, if such a stipulation is made, Gottlieb is convinced that there will still be a need for companies like his and Laser Image.
“These big companies aren't in the business of remanufacturing their products,” he notes. “They'll find it cheaper to outsource it to someone like us.” BNH
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