Industrial Ecology

    Industries in the 21st century will shift away from linear processing and generation of wastes that take too much money to dispose of and cause social instability. Industries are shifting away from the treatment and disposal of wastes towards the elimination of waste creation. The old attitude of the 20th century of "the solution to pollution is dilution" has been called "industrial archaeology", who also says "waste is, after all, wasteful" (Frosch 1995). Manufacturers must design and produce products to make the control of waste as part of the manufacturing process, not as afterthoughts, and employ ecological thinking to design and set out unit processes to implement industrial ecology. This means a shift from "design for assembly/manufacturing" to incorporate "design for diassembly/recycling" (Frosch 1995).

    Industrial ecology will require examining the entire industrial economies and how they generate wastes/pollutants that damage the environment. Natural ecosystems generate no wastes, everything is recycled a source of useable materials and energy for organisms, dead or alive. Production and consumption pathways are very tightly interwoven. Industries will be challenged to become much more efficient. However, more expensive unit manufacturing processes could be put on line if they can save huge amounts of money in producing less wastes that need to be disposed.

    Making markets for wastes will be important. Companies will have to be more transparent about their waste generation so others can know how to use them. Antirecycling laws that once were actually originally formulated as well-meant environmental regulations should be revised.

    The city of Kalundborg, Denmark has a model industrial ecological system where an oil refinery employs waste heat from he power plant for aquaculture, greenhouses and to warm residences and sells sulfur from petroleum to a chemical company and a wallboard producer (as calcium sulfate) to replace the gypsum normally used (that is mined) (Frosch 1995).

    The biggest challenge to industrial ecology is the "system". Societies will be challenged to develop new legal and market structures that allow rapid innovation and changes to occur.

Germany Leads the World in Recycling by Dr. Barclay Hudson

    In Germany manufacturers must take back their packaging. By the "Recycling and Waste Management Act" of 7 October 1996, all items with a Green Dot are picked up by a recycling consortium paid for by businesses. Manufacturers are responsible for the entire life cycle of a product from the moment the products leave the plant until they are recycled, and they must account for the energy used for the product's transportation. The new law requires federal and local governments to make specific ordinances on product responsibility, waste recovery, disposal and "institutional transparency", e.g. no secrecy.

    The new law promotes consumer behavior oriented to purchases of low waste, low energy and low pollution products. Recycling is given priority over incineration to recover energy, and regulations requiring use of renewable resources help establish the basis for circular flow of resources in the economy.

    In response, German paper industries have committed to a 60% recovery of paper by 2000. By 2000, the automotive industry has agreed to take back and recycle its cars. BMW has built a plant In munich to recycle cars.

CLOTH  RECYCLING: SCOTTRAGS

    Municipalities are expanding the 3Rs (reduce, reuse and recycling) of clothes and other cloth. The community benefits are many, including creation of jobs in the textile reclamation industry and add more revenue to offset overall recycling costs. For example, the State of Massachusetts plans to recycle 46 percent of the post-consumer textile stream by the year 2000.

    Textiles represent approximately 5.3 percent of municipal solid waste. Capture rates for textiles can vary from 2 - 7 lbs. per person per year. Curbside collection will generate the largest quantity of materials. Collected curbside material can be picked up with paper or by itself. Most communities are currently collecting clothing curbside in plastic bags. Drop off programs are the second most efficient system and can be implemented with small collection boxes. Collection events are the least productive method of collection but, as an alternative, are acceptable and can be coupled with hazardous waste, earth day collections or other special events. Baled materials currently are generating more income than bagged material which has a market price of approximately of $100.00 per ton. To start your textile collection system contact: Cyntex Company, P.O. Box 716, Hartsdale, New York 10530; ph. (914) 472-4922,  Fax (914) 472-5721; email: Scottrags@aol.com.

Septic/Sewer Alternatives Go Mainstream; Save Thousands: Ecological Toilet and Gray water System Provides Least-Cost Wastewater Solution (Reprinted from BioCycle magazine, March/April 1996)

    Jim and Marilyn MacDonald, Hingham, Mass. remodeling contractors, thought they had lost thousands of dollars on the four-bedroom home they had renovated as an investment property. When they prepared to sell the home, the septic system was deemed failed under Title 5, the state's newly tightened on-site wastewater disposal regulations. The leaching field was right on bedrock, and wastewater drained into wetlands. There was no alternative site for the leaching bed. At first, it looked like the couple's only option was to install a holding tank. Installation cost would be only about $2,000, but the pumping fee at 16 cents a gallon would cost the home's inhabitants $19,272 a year-or $385,440 over a 20-year mortgage. That made the home virtually unsaleable.

    The MacDonalds had heard that Title 5, in addition to raising standards for waste treatment systems, had also approved several alternatives to septic and holding tanks. The couple made a few phone calls, and linked up with David Del Porto of Sustainable Strategies, a Concord, Mass.-based engineering firm that specializes in alternative wastewater systems. Within four months, the couple had a solution for $17,000. The home, now sold, will be installed with an ultra-low-flush toilet that flows to a Vera Carousel Composter in the basement. The home's gray water will drain into a Washwater Garden�, an aerobic, trench-based planting system where the water evaporates and is absorbed by plants specially chosen for their high transpiration rates. The home's new owners will still have to service the composter once a year, but composting will reduce the material in it to 10 percent of its original volume, according to Del Porto. Once a year, the homeowners can either empty the composter themselves (the resulting humus has the look and odor of garden soil) or hire a septage hauler to empty it for a minimal fee. The system is much like one his firm developed for another couple in Wellfleet on Cape Cod.

    "It got us out of a tough situation," says Marilyn MacDonald. "No one wanted a house that was going to cost as much as $20,000 a year to run. And we're thrilled with the broader consequences of this system, the ecological aspect."
 
    In effect since March 31, 1995, Title 5 of the Massachusetts Environmental Code essentially tightened regulations on waste treatment systems in response to new data that indicated that ground and surface water contamination from nitrogen and pathogen transmission through saturated soils is a severe threat to public and environmental health. Many septic systems and cesspools have been deemed inadequate or non-functioning by Title 5, forcing property owners to replace them with
new septic systems or tight tanks or seek alternatives. (Title 5 inspections typically only are required when title to a property is
transferred, such as for a sale.) In many coastal communities, proximity to bodies of water and building right on ledge create a situation where leaching cannot take place at workable rates. "Town officials are reluctant to approve tight tanks because they cost so much to pump," Del Porto says. "Therefore, people break them, and they illegally drain." To offer property owners more solutions, Title 5 approved alternatives to septic and holding tanks, including gray water systems, recirculating sand filters, package aerobic treatment plants and Wisconsin elevated sand mounds, as well as composting toilets.

    Before Title 5, Del Porto says composting toilets were only allowed with a full-sized conventional system and only with special permits. "So there was no incentive to have one," he says. "Massachusetts is leading the nation. The plumbing code, after 23 years of lobbying, now accepts composting toilets as a viable alternative to the water closet. That means every time a flush toilet is required in the plumbing code for occupancy, a composting toilet can be substituted," Del Porto says. "But it must be installed by plumbers." For some clients whose soil absorption fields have been declared undersized for their homes, Sustainable Strategies has recommended solutions that reduce the amount of wastewater going into the septic tank,
thus allowing the homeowners to keep their current systems. "The key is simply reducing the amount of effluent going into the tank by using ultra-low-flush toilets or composting toilets, plus water-conserving fixtures and appliances and other measures."

    Del Porto, also the founder of Ecos, a supplier of several composting systems and water-saving appliances, is certain this is the system of the future.  "Ecological systems have come of age. They work and they save money. Ours is zero discharge. It's a closed loop. There's nothing left to dispose. That's why it's truly an ecological system. It's all used, nothing is wasted," he says. "It's a technology with ecological integrity that's installed by plumbers and serviced by professionals, just like your heating and cooling system."

    Someday you might say that your new bamboo floor once served as a pollution-prevention tool for cleaning up pig waste.
Sustainable Strategies recently met with state officials, hog farmers and federal agencies to discuss ecological ways to manage animal wastes in North Carolina. The contamination of soil, groundwater and waterways by animal wastes-mostly pig and chicken manure-is becoming a crippling and even life-threatening problem in some parts of the United States and around
the world. We were called upon to develop a solution, and we did: bamboo forests.

    Animal waste that flows to conventional effluent lagoons, outfalls and discharge pipes, often ends up-be it partially treated or untreated-into environmentally sensitive "receptors," such as ground or surface waters. Outbreaks of new emerging pathogens, such as Pfiesteria, are linked to the effects of swine and chicken manure pollution in warm water estuaries and rivers, killing fish and causing disease in fishermen who come in contact with Pfiesteria contaminated water.

    In North Carolina, unplanned growth of swine feedlots has devastated the state's rivers and estuaries. Legislation has been enacted to clean up North Carolina's waterways by using tougher pollution restrictions and a $1 billion plan to modernize water and sewage treatment. According to a North Carolina newspaper, the new legislation will spread the responsibility for clean water among hog farmers, local governments, golf course owners and others whose activities have polluted the Neuse River, Pamlico Sound and other waterways. Other legislation has been proposed emphasizing land-use planning, better sewage treatment and criminal penalties for persistent polluters. The problem is so severe that Governor Jim Hunt placed a
two-year moratorium on new swine facilities.

    Sustainable Strategies used the ecological paradigm to safely utilize the polluting components of animal manures to ultimately grow plants that have economic value. Planning, engineering and design with the ecological paradigm as our template is the work of Sustainable Strategies. In our "Bamboo Forest" plan, pretreated wastewater drains into an appropriately engineered forest of phreatophytes-plants known for fast growth and high water usage rates. These plants and their microbially active rhizosphere (roots) will transform pollutants, including the nitrogen (which causes unwanted plant and pathogen growth) into valuable biomass and evaporate and transpire (plant respiration) the remaining water. Bamboo is a workhorse plant in this regard, and the growing demand for this material means that this treatment system results in a marketable product, which offsets the construction and maintenance costs of the system. And so the organic loop is closed-that's eco-nomic! In this way,
the farmers profit from their wastes. Most importantly, the Bamboo Forest does this while protecting public and environmental health.

    Bamboo, the tallest member of the grass family of plants, could be called a "wonder plant." It is quite phreatophytic, which means it voraciously consumes nitrogen to produce protein, making it an ideal nutrient sink. Bamboo is well known in the Americas, as well as in tropical Asia, for its use as building and construction materials due to its uncommon strength, hardiness and rapid growth. It even has food value in the form of its nutritious shoots. Bamboo leaves are also an excellent animal fodder crop, as they have an 18 to 22 percent protein content. In India, bamboo fiber provides the basis for paper and corrugated media. It's also used for fuel: The rapid growth and high energy content of bamboo also make it a leading source of biomass-derived fuels in developing countries. Bamboo can take anywhere from six months to three years to reach full
working size (depending on species and maturity of bamboo stock planted), so the system will not be working at full capacity at first. In the beginning, unused effluent will flow to a storage pond or a holding tank in closed-loop, zero-discharge systems. The need for overflow back-up diminishes as the plants mature and the active microbial population in the rhizosphere develops. The system works best when it's sheltered from rain and extreme cold by siting it close to buildings, or, in some instances, in
greenhouses. Riparian and coastal bamboo forests and buffer strips will improve lake and river water and provide an economical and sustainable strategy for the management of agricultural manures. Once again, nature provides-when we
listen to her!

    For the Pacific island state of Pohnpei, Sustainable Strategies has developed a way to transform pig waste into pig feed.
On Pohnpei, part of the Federated States of Micronesia, many families keep one to 10 pigs. Pig manure has been contaminating soil and waterways, resulting in diseases, such as Leptospirosis. To address this problem, the South Pacific Region Environmental Programme and the United States Department of Agriculture contracted Sustainable Strategies to design and demonstrate a small-scale piggery pollution prevention system. This low-cost zero-discharge treatment system will be designed and tested in a pilot project on Pohnpei in early 1998. The system will use both Wastewater Garden and composting technology to convert the nutrient-rich pig waste into valuable plants. This ecologically integrated system first composts the manure and spilled feed. Any liquid (urine, water) that drains from the composter is evaporated and is transpired by plants in a  small Wastewater Garden.
 
    Among the plants grown in the Wastewater Garden will be kangkong and fast-growing water hyacinth, which can be used for high-protein, low-cost pig feed. Construction- and furniture-grade bamboo will be grown to use up the remaining water and nutrients. Store-bought pig feed is expensive in the islands, and the production of feed from waste will serve as an incentive to use of this technology. Commercial feed currently sells on-island for about $0.20 to 0.25 per pound; an average pig is fed five pounds a day. Given this expense (more than $350 per pig per year), the cost of constructing a Wastewater Garden
would be returned over a relatively short period of time, as plants grown in the garden replace a substantial amount of commercial feed. That's closing the organic loop.

Allenby, B. and D. Richards. 1994. The greening of industrial ecosystems. National Academy Press.
Frosch, R. 1994. Industrial ecology: minimizing the impact of industrial waste. Physics Today 47(11): 63-68.
Frosch, R. 1995. Industrial ecology of the 21st century. Scientific American 178-181.

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