Document OzYvLaDV9M305K10oGegQBnbe

-v ^ \ I k:l NORTHERN NEW JERSEY xt rn .vj DECEMBER 23, 1984 ittatsTM,'. s***.*,';^*, * - 1 ./, y*! T|- pjeWv; v> 'T& "M siA Wp ^ [ !; S^S^B pJ^apB*T.. . - 'w^ T^' ' ' '' * ' -v'4* ' tfasi of su'perjiiaTkeihShelve* gUyearii^TSeyX-T were tooted ak ltj^tweight^unbreakable, flexiblei,.;':; tough ^ the ulthwtecanaumera* dreamY;*^ySy,- . he plastic boUTereyoIntlon ha*coroe home `^p"'^p:^p'yy'\ -rYv.V^:/----'- ~ :; y-yrl ;llietheseaguHsonNew Jersey's, Ian<`:''''p'/i-.-*"*>! **&. P', Elastic traaix is thestate's newestsolid*waste >>'' iKjp. mV prvolem,' audit has triggered tslk cd radical solu* =" the best, pray, toproduie chairs, floors, clothing?'V'rY: V Horn: '-Sia^.Coiimianejr. TWs ls a-social Issue that has td'i;,,} ,V "Tha,Industry has'abated a ;yorybig'pollution" .be^essuiitofrf: Naone has hadtbe guts to'do it.'* 'Z V'*, problem, and It's Inherently builtinto; the Indus- * Tni October, New Jersey-officials threatened ? , ' %tJ try," said Barry Commooer, the biologist, environrr.entaiisi, and former presidential candidate. - - desperate measures to deal with the fact ... that a v ,.j , v. :f .1 EN 2816 # ll * -*--41--- --* ******* trt oV It | thid Se PT.ASTICS; Pafl A-1J ` growing percentage of the state's trash does not biodegrade, is not belng recycled, and in some cases can not safely be burned. duction of PET cans for Coca-Cola begins next year. Plastic beer cans are being discussed. They ann unced that if the plas tics and packaging industries don't ~ Sparred by bottle laws begin collecting and recycling plas- Bottle laws like the one passed tic containers, New Jersey might ~last year in New York State have consider taxing some and banning , * accelerated the switch. Consumers - others. gravitate toward plastic when they Industry officials reacted quickly, s'*. have to return bottles intact to the ' faced with a potentially sticky pub* >' store. Beverage companies know llc-relations problem. They signed that l on for meetings with the state and In New Jersey, most plastic bot began talking of recycling demon* tles end up in landfills. Industry offi ' 'Stratton projects and cooperative cials say 15 to 18 percent of all PET ventures. bottles are recycled nationwide. But But they appeared to be pinning; ' ~ the few New Jersey communities their hopes on a small group of inde . that have tried recycling plastic pendent entrepreneurs pioneering in have failed. " -the still-unproven field of plastic re The main problem is that plastic cycling. Whether they will succeed containers have a low materia] den _ remains in doubt sity and low intrinsic value, Ms. "My personal feeling is that's . Shiel said. Those qualities make smoke and mirrors," said one skep them ideal for packaging, but un tic, Maurice Sampson, recycling economical to collect and sell. coordinator for the City of Newark, A small quantity of bottles, worth "because the economics aren't' little, quickly fills a truck. Towns there." don't have the equipment to bale Untold amounts them and can't amass enough to sat- isfy a buyer. So collecting them | '* How much plastic is in New Jerl-sey's "waste stream" is not clear. It Tprobably varies from place to place, 'but estimates put the percentage by weight at as high as 10 percent By "volume, it's much larger. What is more significant is the rate of increase, officials say. Mary costs more than the plastic is worth. What is needed, Ms. Shiel believes, is a reliable system of collection and processing. Manufacturers would buy the material if they were as sured - of a steady supply. Towns would collect it if they were assured of a price. T. Shiel, administrator of the stateOffice of Recycling, figures the Pressure on industry amount of plastic in trash has in* . creased fivefold in five years. Perhaps the most remarkable growth has come in the area of lightweight, transparent soda bot tles, the polyethylene terephthalate (PET) bottles now shoulder-to-sboulder on supermarket shelves. PET bottles were introduced in 1978. Within five years, they cor nered 21 percent of the soft-drink market. They are expected to take an additional 15 percent annually, industry figures show. Meanwhile, PET liquor bottles, in troduced last year, could corner a quarter of the market by 1987. Pro- ... So last month Ms. Shiel suggested giving the industry 18 months to de velop a collection system. If it has nothing by July 1986, the state should consider requiring a deposit on all plastic "one-time use" con- - tainers. 9 The deposits -- graduated from 10 cents to 25 cents depending on the size of the container -- would enable the state to pay for a plastic recy cling and processing program of its own, she said. ' She recommended a more drastic solution for polyvinyl chloride and . polyvinyledene chloride, two plas_ tics that are used increasingly in ' packaging but which emit hydro Flfteen to 18 percent of all PET bottles are . recycled nationwide. But in New Jersey; most chloric acid when burned and are especially difficult to sell for reuse. The state should consider banning them from packaging, Ms. Shiel rec ommended in a report to the legisla ture, unless manufacturers find a plastic bottles end up in landfills. _ way to recycle them. "Our position is the industry is making these products and they can't cut off the handling of them at ,the supermarket shelf," Ms. Shiel said in a recent interview. "They can't just dream up ways of packag ing a product without thinking about the waste." Immediate response The threat evoked an immediate response. Industry officials have agreed to work with the state to ward a cooperative program, possi bly including a research center at a state university, Ms. Shiel said. Plastic industry people Insist any problems with plastic recycling are simply kinks to be worked out, that the technology is in its infancy and has yet to mature. So far, PET bottles are being re cycled into fiberfill for jackets and sleeping bags, strapping for industri al pallets, and moulded products. Some also goes into fiberglass-rein* ; forced products like shower stalls and sinks. Industry officials put the potential demand for reprocessed PET at about 1.3 billion pounds, based on projections from current markets, said Hal Hart of the Plastic Bottle . Information Bureau in New York ! City. What must be done is turn that potential demand into reality, he said. Purity standards Toward that end, the information bureau hopes to develop standards of purity for reprocessed PET. It has published a national directory of the 33 processors that prepare bottles for reuse, and regularly writes about recycling in its Plastic Bottle Re porter. Meanwhile, the Society of the Plastics Industry hopes to develop a system of grading reprocessed plas tic. Without standards, manufactur ers simply use virgin materials to be certain of high grades of quality, said John fcawrence, technical direc tor of the society. The society also has plans for a national plastic recycling demon stration plant, he said. Its aim would be to convince consumers that there are uses for old bottles, and to at tract entrepreneurs into the busi ness. TEN 2817 jci'j i/,yz- Mom-and-pop outfits But most of those in the field are mom-and-pop operations experi menting with unproven technol ogies. Plastic recycling remains a primitive art, incapable of produc ing recycled bottles that meet feder al safety standards. The plastics society doesn't even know how many manufacturers use reprocessed plastic, Hart said. Some may be reluctant to make it known because the public may not be ready, he said. Meanwhile, the demonstration project, which is supposed to be a joint effort by plastic producers and the packaging industry, is still mere ly an idea. It is not targeted for a particular state, Lawrence said. Asked how the industry will re spond to New Jersey's threat, Law rence said simply, "We are going to be in communication there in New Jersey to try. to work out some' plans." Some remain doubtful about the prospects for plastic recycling. - Sampson, the Newark recycling coordinator, wonders if there is suf ficient economic incentive for man ufacturers to use reprocessed plastic' over virgin materials. He suspects demand for reprocessed plastic is severely limited. "How many down jackets can you make? How many boats can you make?" Sampson asked. "The one I like best is polyester suits. How many polyester suits are you going to make?" Sampson suggested that the indus try exaggerates the prospects for re cycling while it steadily takes over the beverage bottle and packaging markets. He and others mention ru mors, which the industry denies, that the industry is buying back used bot tles but "land-banking" them in the South. Sampson fears that once plastic corners the market, there can be no turning back. The less glass there is to collect, the less will be recycled. He predicts a time when there would be no glass recycling. "The real threat here is as we go into more and more plastic contain ers and packaging, we decrease our opportunity to recycle," he said. "ITiere are real horors in my mind with an all-plastic waste stream, be cause all you can do is bum it." And that raises new questions. Commoner, a professor of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Queens College in New York City who has studied the kind of inciner ators currently proposed for Bergen and Passaic counties, contends burn ing plastic with paper produces the toxic chemical dioxin. Although Environmental Protec tion Agency officials have said any dioxin would be destroyed by burn ing the trash at a sufficiently high temperature, Commoner disagrees, arguing that the dioxin is formed in the smokestack. He says no air pollution control device can yet control the emissions. Acid emissions Another concern is acid gas emis sions from burning plastics that con tain significant amounts of chlorine, said William O'Sullivan, chief of en gineering and technology in the state's' air pollution control pro gram. "It's probably not a ihajor health concern near the plant," be said. "However, we are concerned about the cumulative impact of acid gases being emitted into the atmosphere." O'Sullivan said New Jersey is re quiring air pollution control "scrub bers" to minimize the emissions, which could contribute to acid rain. But he said no scrubbers achieve a 100-percent, reduction. . Commoner contends that prob lems like New Jersey's point to a larger question: "The real-problem is, do we need to make all these plas tics?" Commoner contends there are few unique new uses for plastics. In stead, plastics invade existing fields, like packaging, and replace products But he said the proposal was dropped after the state received "a kind of unofficial commitment" by the plastic industry to buy the plas tic containers returned to Vermont distributors. He said the Industry has met its , commitment Most of the bottles are taken out of state, where Rouleau said he believes that most are recy cled and up to 30 to 40 percent are stockpiled for future use. In Minnesota, the industry chal, lenged one proposal to ban plastic ! milk bottles and another to require any new packaging be reviewed by a control board that would consider disposal problems, Lawrence said. Once again, the industry said the issue was consumers' choice. Law rence said the industry successfully argued in court that the laws dei prived Minnesota consumers of their right to state-of-the-art products. that were once widely used. "The disadvantage is that the in dustry that produces these things is inherently polluting," he said. "And the stuff they make can't be gotten rid of without polluting the environ ment -- which is not true of cotton." New Jersey is not the first state to consider regulating plastic: Ver mont threatened it and Minnesota tried it. In both cases, the plastic industry won. In Vermont, the legislature con sidered a bill to require plastic bot tle manufacturers to file a recycling plan with the state, said Andre Rou leau, administrator of the beverage container law in Vermont. TEN 2818 r&J ^ rS/.fi Inventor banking i his firm's future on recycling plastics FROM PAGE A-l riots dampened his enthusiasm for the work. One day, his insurance man, who had a silk-screening business, brought Tammera a challenge: You're inventive, the insurance man said; find an efficient way of remov ing defective silk-screened labels from plastic bottles. Tammera and his wife, Elvira, quit the supermarket. She got a job in an office and he holed up in the family garage in Livingston.. He pressed the family stove and wash er-dryer into service and embarked upon a two-year quest. Plastic bottles sloshed around in a barrel propped up on a rocking chair in the garage, while Tammera sat in the kitchen, talked on the phone, and kept the chair in motion with a pul ley and rope. One day the vacuum cleaner at tached to the barrel filled the garage with foam. There were late-night trips to laundromats to spin the plas tic bottles on different cycles. In the end, a bird cage, rigged with a metal shaft and two propel lers, provided the prototype for Tammera's Polywasher. That was the bottle-cleaning machine; it led eventually to the plastic reproces sor. r But neighbors began asking ques tions about the truck traffic in the driveway. Accused by neighbors of running a business in a residential area, the Tammeras moved to a small plant in Morris County and set up Pure Tech Research. For 10 years, Pure Tech's special, ty was removing labels. Then polyl ethylene terephthalate (PET) plastic ' soda bottles surfaced in the late J 1970's, and manufacturers asked J Tammera if the stuff could be recy- . cled. Now Tammera says his seven- person firm turns some 30 million used bottles annually into transpar ent plastic flakes, which are sold for manufacture into things like polyes ter fiber, strapping, clothing, and ta bles. Some skeptics wonder about the limits to plastic recycling. After all, asks Maurice Sampson, recycling coordinator for Newark, "How many polyester suits are you going to make?'' But the Tammeras call their flakes "the Rolls-Royce of repro cessed plastic." Selling reprocessed PET at less than half the price of the virgin material, Tammera says de mand can only go up. "It's profitable," he insists. "Oth erwise, you won't stay in the busi ness." - JANNY SCOTT If TEN 2819 The Newspaper tor New Jersey U Newark, N.J. Monday, December 24, 1984 Essex pioneering trash incineration with dangerous plastics eliminated By GORDON BISHOP 1 ' industry,-The Star-Ledger has learned, prestigious educational institution--ei are moving to eliminate the last possi* ther Rutgers, Stevens or New Jersey . The proposed Essex County re- ble problem facing incinerators* that Institute of Technology--to come up- source recovery, plant--considered the convert wastedto beat and electricity. with recommendations that will allow* most advanced garbage-to-energy tech- The final* hurdle standing in the plastic to be recycled or incinerated nology in the world-is about.to be way of the cleanest energy recovery with no harm to human health or the made even safer with the removal of that modern technology can achieve is harmful plastics from the waste flow. plastic packaging, which opponents of Plots* turn to Pag* 5 State government and the plastic incinerators want removed from gar bage before it is burned * The "harmful" plastic accounts for less than one-tentn* of 1 percent of the daily garbage, by weight . ' But it's creating a monumental . conflict between citizens and public of ficials in siting incinerators that con vert garbage into energy. State officials, however, say that even with that tiny bit of plastic in the garbage, incinerators can safely convert waste into energy, so safe in fact that the risk level nas been re duced to one cancer case per 10 million _ population, far lower than any industri- ~ al operation today. But opponents of incinerators want an "absolutely safe" operation, something that is regarded as physical ly impossible by public health authori ties and insurance companies responsi ble for requiring the safest standards possible. Although "zero risk" is an impossi ble goal in the real world, state govern ment and the plastic industry are nev ertheless responding to the plastic issue. On the one front, the Society of Plastic Industries is establishirg a Re cycling Foundation that will .elect a s Photo by Richard Rotenbtrg " Plastic bottles, such as this one filled with qpoklng oil, cannot be recycled or incinerated ------------continued from Pag. ,--------- down at temperatures above 1,800 de- cause plastic is harder to recycle than ---------------------.------ ------------ --------------- erees, effectively eliminating any glass and metal packaging. environment. t health risks, i . Sheil is implementing the 198f Re At the same time, The Star-Ledger ' Despite assurances from combus- cycling Act, which calls for a 25 per: has learned, the State Departments of tion and air pollution control experts,' cent reduction in the volume of garbage Energy and Environmental Protection residents fighting the siting of incinera- by 1986 through the removal of news are drafting a mandatory recycling bill tors in their "backyards" are. not con-, papers, magazines and metal and glass that will reouire the coding of plastic vinced the waste-to-energy system has containers that can be recycled packaging that incinerator opponents yet been demonstrated to be foolproof, The Recycling Act is being amend want recycled or converted safely into as long as the "bad plastics" remain iir ed by the. Recycling Office and state energy. , t ' r the waste flow. - - energy and environmental officials. 7n addition, tlid ,State Recycling. At the crux of the debaters poly The revised Recycling Act will be in Office is pushing for a deposit on all. vinyl-chloride (PVC) which is used to' troduced by the Kean administration in plastic containers to prevent them, make plastic wrappings and containers.' January, according to State Environ from being thrown away as garbage. 1 Since they represent such a small mental Commissioner Robert E. Hugh- All of these actions are in response. fraction of the solid waste'flow, the'* to the'state's efforts to build the'"sa Department of Environmental Protec Barbara Greer, assistant director fest" garbage-to^nergy plant in the tion (DEP) does not regard them as of the DEP's Office of Regulatory Serv United States on a 23-acre site along a waste disposal problem. . ices, said that one'of the provisions of the lower Passaic River-by the New The DEP has encouraged the de the proposed state mandatory Recy Jersey Turnpike. - - " ' velopment of hi-tech incinerators.as the cling Act is the coding of plastic con The Essex Countv incinerator, to most acceptable altemative/to burying:. tainers to alert consumers as to their be located in Newark, would be the garbage in the ground where it can pol "recyclability." most advanced waste conversion plant lute the water, air and land. If the coding system does not in the wdfld, .serving as the "moder not Biologist Barry Commoner, the work, the Recycling Office is recom just for New Jersey but the rest of the . leading critic of both incinerators and mending a deposit on plastic contain nation seeking to turn garbage into heat the chemical industry, has singled out ers. and electricity without affecting the pvc as the big obstacle- standing in Essex County will have a manda public health or the air, water and soiL State health and environmental authorities, as well as chemical/plas tic industry officials, are now working .together to attack the Pyc- plastic the way o`f proper d..i.s.p..o..s..a..l..o..f..g..a..r.bage. tory recycling system in place by the Commoner, however, has advised time its Incinerator is in operation by Stephen Passage, manager of Port Au late 1987 or early 1988, according to thority's resource recovery projects, .Shapiro. that "all other environmental problems "Garbage from Essex County's 22 problem, according to Robert Donovan, ean be resolved if PVC can be eliminat secretary-treasurer of the New Jersey ed" in the conversion of waste to en Recyling Forum and ah executive with ergy. _. - Owens-Illinois, Inc., Saddle Brook, one Commoner heads the Center for of the nation's major manufacturers of the Biology of Natural Systems at glass and plastic packaging.' Queens College on Long Island. ' `.`The plastic industry has been The Port Authority of New York moving along unresponsively to what's and New Jersey is a prime partner happening in recycling and resource re ' in the development of the 3260-million, municipalities will not be allowed to iise the Newark incinerator until each community has its mandatory recycling system in place," Shapiro asserted. The state will be taking the same approach through its proposed manda tory recycling act. William O'Sullivan, chief of the DEP Y Bureau of Engineering and covery," Donovan admitted. "But all of 2,277-tons-per-day Essex resource re Technology, said even without remov that's changing now as the public and covery plant ing the PVC packaging from garbage, government are putting more and riiore Essex County Executive Peter the health risk has been reduced--by pressure on the packaging industry to Shapiro, who put together the team for the application of advanced technology v change its ways, or government will be the state's first energy recovery --to a safety level of 99.99 percent forced to do it for them." project, also holds the plastic industry That is the efficiency level of a hi- Donovan acknowledged that if the responsible for producing materials tech incinerator equipped with scrub plastic industry does not respond to the that cannot be easily recycled. bers and electrostatic precipitators or problem, government will--with public "A product must reflect its true fabric filters, to remove gases and par support--ban the plastic container that costs to society," Shapiro explained. "If ticulates. opponents find an onerous burden in the it costs society more to deal with that The 1/I00ths of. 1 percent is the recycling of waste. product than its actual cost, then potential risk level'of modern incin "We've got to do something, other there's obviously no place for that prod erators, O'Sullivan stressed. wise government will be doing it for uct in the free enterprise system." "Since there Is- no such thing as us," Donovan, a veteran lobbyist for the Shapiro was referring to the fact zero risk in the real world, there can packaging industry, predicted. that plastic packaging may be cheap in be no such thing as an absolutely safe Johrt Lawrence, technical director the marketplace because society is anything, whether you're in a car, plane of the Society of Plastic Industries, said forced to pay the "hidden costs" of tak or walking across the street," O'Sulli a Plastics Research Institute would be ing care of that product after its useful van explained. established' at a major educational life in the production-consumption The state, the Port Authority and center to deal with the issue of plastic cycle. the plastics industry all agree that recycling and incineration of plastic. "No ope wants plastic throwaways today's technology can convert garbage "All plastic packaging' makes up now because they have no value," Sha* into energy with the least risk to so Eonly two to four percent of the solid waste flow, by weight," Lawrence, a ire said. "It can't be recycled. It can ciety;_______________ _ e safely incinerated at extremely high chemical engineer, said.``The PVC plas temperatures and at a greater cost to tic represents less than one-tenth of 1 thosepaying for garbage disposal." percent" - The State Recycling Office has Such plastic is used to wrap meats proposed placing a deposit on all plas to prevent them from turning brown in the refrigerated display cases. PVC plastics are also used for food contain ers such as salad oils. tic containers as one way of getting them out of the waste flow. State Recycling Administrator Mary Sheil last October announced that TEN 2821 Combustion engineering experts a deposit on plastic containers would say PVC chemical compounds break have to be imposed by July 1986 be I \ The DEP has retained three out- of-state consulting firms, considered the best in their fields, for. setting the operating standards for incinerators in New Jersey. As a result, the state has the most stringent air quality standards in the nation. The three consulting firms devel oping the toughest incineration stand ards in the U.S. are; Karch & Associ ates, health specialists based in. Wash ington, D.C.; Beaumont Environmental, Inc., Long bland, experts on air pollu tion control devices, and Battelle Co lumbus Laboratories, Ohio, combustion engineers. ... O'Sullivan's position on PVCs'is that "the packaging industry can change to a different plastic without chlorine in them." \ ^. ,i *t The new generation of incinera* tors is considered the safest yet devel-; oped because they are scientifically1 controlled by the "three T's and big- O"--temperature, time, turbulence and; oxyged. "By regulating those elements, an i incinerator can operate at peak, effi ciency around-the-clock," O'Sullivan, said. Turbulence involves the proper mix of garbage with oxygen. The Essex/Newark incineration l project, coupled with mandatory re cycling, has been endorsed by the re-. gional Lung Association and Sierra- Club, as well as the Physicians for So cial Responsibility headed by Dr. Walter Burnstein, a practicing physi-' cian from Denvijle. Even removing PVCs from the refuse will not entirely get rid of the chlorine problem, the plastic industries technical adviser pointed out "Most food we eat comes with so dium chloride," Lawrence said. "Com mon table salt is sodium chloride It's one of-those chemicals that gets around. Some of it can: be controlled. Getting rid of all of it before incinera tion is not possible.". The most important step towards eliminating dioxin is "complete com bustion," Lawrence said, referring to a public health study done for the New York-City Department of Sanitation./ - New YorK City is planning Jospend $3 billion to build eight incinera tors to convert its mountain of daily trash to heat and electricity. A typical incinerator (2,000 tons per day) can generate enough electrici ty to meet the daily demands of 40,000 homes. TEN 2822 77cvv7 ^7</?. /$<