env i ronment

TOO BIG TO NOTICE Huge waste cuts found by Dow, activists in unique pollution prevention program Jeff Johnson C&EN Washington

Some 7 million lb of waste and emissions is being cut and $5.3 million will be saved each

year through a unique pollution preven­tion program at Dow Chemical's Mid­land, Mich., plant.

The program brought together a half-dozen local environmentalists, who are also longtime company critics, and Dow process managers to hammer out capital spending projects that will result in man­ufacturing changes to cut waste and save money (C&EN, Aug. 17,1998, page 34).

After nearly two years of bimonthly meetings, last month the company and environmental activists announced 17 projects that will cost Dow a total of

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$3 million and save the company $5.3 million a year.

The return is quite good, but the capital spending is tiny by Dow standards—too small to even catch the eye or the interest of a production en­gineer—says Jeff Feerer, environmental, health, and safety manager for DoVs Michigan operations. With annual sales of around $18 billion, Dow has bud­geted $1.5 billion for capi­tal spending for new plants and equipment worldwide this year and $780 million in the U.S. (C&EN, Dec. 21,1998, page 13). Feerer

"As an organization," Feerer says, "we look for big things, and we reward engineers for doing big projects, but these little ones, it turns out, had a big impact on waste."

Despite their small size, the projects eliminate 6.5 million lb of yearly produc­tion waste, out of 30 million lb, most of which was being incinerated on-site. They also cut 450,000 lb of pollution re­leased to the environment, reducing Dow Midland's Toxics Release Invento­ry (TRI) totals by almost one-third.

'This was wildly successful and be­yond anything we'd imagined in the be­ginning," Feerer says. "We figured the probability of success was low and that our plant had basically plateaued over the past five years in possible emissions and waste reductions."

Feerer credits the face-to-face meet­ings between Dow*s production staff and community activists as well as DoVs use of an outside waste and chemical process consultant for finding manufacturing modifications and for creating a mind-set among plant personnel to encourage pro­duction changes to cut waste.

"The process was a revelation for a lot of engineers," he continues. 'We talk about 'yield improvements,' and the ac­tivists talk about pollution prevention and waste reduction. The mind-set of engineers is, We have a permit to burn this stuff, so why is this even an issue?'"

Feerer says improvements in yield or

IS i

production output should, however, also make for less waste, and engineers need to recognize the necessity to couple the two. The dialogue with activists, he says, helped both groups find common ground.

The activists also learned from the discussions, says Tracey Easthope of the Ecology Center, a regional environ­mental group in Ann Arbor, Mich., that participated in the project.

'We found that just because a project saves money, doesn't mean a company will do it. People compete for capital in a business, and you have to save or make a lot of money to justify a project," Easthope says.

These projects, she notes, had fine rates of re­turn, averaging 180%, but actual dollars were so small that they were not on an "engineer's radar screen."

'The operational peo­ple," Easthope notes, "are oriented toward compli­

ance [with environmental laws]. It is not their business to note our concerns about specific chemicals. Their line is, We work with these compounds all the time, and we think they are fine.'"

However, through the meetings, Easthope says Dow's staffers were pre­sented with "additional motivation" to consider process changes.

'This is not to say that they were con­vinced by our arguments, but they be­came aware that there were other prior­ities out there, and maybe they could make some accommodations to cut use of certain chemicals," Easthope notes.

Jerry Martin, Dow vice president and global director for environment, health, and safety regulatory affairs, also attend­ed the company-activists meetings, and Easthope credits his attendance as a sig­nal to Dow staff that top management cared about the process.

In addition, Dow is considering using a similar technique at its Freeport, Tex­as, facility. Feerer says a final decision is "imminent."

Freeport is really big, he notes, and has 4.4 million lb of TRI-reported emis­sions, three times those at Midland. It is unclear, however, whether Dow will turn to community activists in Texas.

Bill Bilkovich, the waste consultant whose two-year investigation led to the process changes Dow is implementing, will take part in the Freeport program,

Seven million lb of waste eliminated Dow Chemical's Midland, Mich., plant has eliminated 6.5 million lb of waste and cut 453 ,000 lb of pollution annu­ally through 17 projects developed by a unique committee made up of Dow engineers and community activists. This reduction amounts to 30% less annual environmental releases report­ed through the Toxics Release Invento­ry and 21% less waste treated at the plant.

Among the capital projects were ones that will eliminate the following:

• 984 ,000 lb per year of tetrachlo-roethylene wasted in making the herbi­cide 2,4-dichlorophenoxyacetic acid; project costs of $140,000 and savings of $525,700 per year.

• 273 ,000 lb per year of methylene chloride wasted in manufacturing of pharmaceutical products; costs of

$ 1 4 0 , 0 0 0 and annual savings of $450,000.

• 1.36 million lb of formaldehyde and 800,000 lb of chloromethane re­maining as waste each year in a process to make anion- and cation-exchange resins for wastewater treatment applica­tions; project costs of $330,000 and savings of $3.3 million per year.

• 4 5 6 , 0 0 0 lb of styrene and 364,000 lb of ethylbenzene wasted an­nually in the manufacture of high-impact polystyrene; costs of $300,000 and savings of $270,000 per year.

• 2 0 8 , 0 0 0 lb of styrene and 44 ,000 lb of butadiene wastes gener­ated yearly in making styrene-buta-diene latex product; costs of $50,000 and savings of $105,000 per year.

For the full report, see http://www. nrdc.org.

Feerer says. Also expected at Freeport is Linda E. Greer, a staff scientist with the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), who organized the unique program.

Greer stresses that a big part of the "magic" of the process was community input, and one of NRDC's first jobs is to find activists.

She notes that the project's results

show that some views held by the envi­ronmental community are wrong. In particular, she wonders about the man­tra that there is always business value in environmental protection.

'These projects are not of a compel­ling interest to business, despite returns and waste reductions, because, ironically, they are too small," Greer says. "It's like worrying about the cost of paper clips— this is not a good way to run a business."

Return on investment may not be enough to self-motivate businesses, she says. "You need another ingredient in the soup," Greer notes. 'The interaction between the businesspeople and activ­ists helped persuade Dow that these were valuable projects and worth put­ting money into."

Greer and Easthope want to see Dow move forward at Freeport, but they also want the company to complete a half-dozen projects remaining at Midland. They see the program as a national model and wonder what kind of oppor­tunities may be found at other compa­nies lacking Dow's size, resources, and pollution prevention programs.^

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