Identify processes that generate pollution. Draw chalk line – figurative, or literal.  Look at everything around the process/activity - people, vehicles, cleaners, equipment.

Coffee is batch process.  What if have multi-step?.........metal parts degreasing and coating operation

If you’re Starbucks what are you making the money on?  Yet you have all these non-product outputs.  You’re spending money on many things that are just being thrown away, not sold.  And your employees have  to spend time picking up the trash and taking it out to the dumpster when they could be making more coffee.  Money’s going to waste.  Try to make more coffee for less money.

When you draw a chalk line, you want to be careful and be aware of things outside the chalkline that can have a significant affect on this process. When you back up, you see things that can have a significant affect on your process.  You want to also look at indirect inputs.  What are some of the indirect inputs? CLICK (WAIT) In this case, this company likes a little Almond flavor in their coffee.

As an example of an unsuspected influence to a process, let’s looking at a metal machining process.  Here we have a drill bit that bathed in coolant that is used in manifold production.  The coolant is collected in a trough on the floor and reused until it goes bad.   The company is having a big problem – the coolant is going rancid and losing its ability to cool so quickly that they can’t replace the coolant fast enough.  The drill bit gets too hot and breaks.  They have to fly a new bit down from Michigan and the plant is located near Brownsville, TX.  It’s a $1million/day operation so down time is really costly.  Let’s compare to pictures of the process area.  How does the floor look different from one picture to the next?

Why does the area look cleaner now?

Here’s what the plant operators think is happening

Turns out there was some surprise input!  The phosphate soap used by janitorial staff who clean the floors causes microbes/bacteria to grow in the coolant.  This makes it go rancid so fast!

Increase coolant life to months instead of weeks by switching to Dawn dish detergent.  Save $300,000 just in coolant purchasing.

We have created a special portal into the TCEQ website specifically dedicated to Pollution prevention. I think you will find it easier than trying to remember http://www.tceq.state.tx.us/assistance/P2Recycle/wrpa/p2planning.html So let’s go through some of these resources.

Here is a snapshot of what is included. The left column is resources for meeting the requirements. What is WRPA, the APR, and planning and Executive Summary fall below the screen. The center column is for current hot topics. And the right column will help guide your internet search. For instance if you were to click on p2 resources you would find links to information like:

P2pays.org is the largest online library of pollution prevention information. Use it to search for published materials of interest to your specific topics. You’ll hear us mention many types of p2 equipment and you are likely to find references to others as you prepare your plan. You can use IWRC.org and EPA VendInfo to identify vendors of the equipment. I have two cautions to go with this information. We are not recommending any equipment as a cure all for everyone. Please use the same caution in investigating these options as you would in investigating all others. And secondly Epa’s sight specifically note verified versus not verified. This is the sign for not verified. Verified does not equal an endorsement of a particular product.

One of the most commonly identified Hazardous Wastes is a companies solvents. A hazardous solvent can be considered hazardous because are designed to taking anything off anything. You can use the Solvent Alternatives guide to help you find a less hazardous solvent and the coatings alternative guide to find a less hazardous coating. These are tools that step you through the process of identifying the right alternative for you. This is possible because it asks a series of questions about what you are currently using and how you are currently using it. In other words it will help you find a solvent or coating alternative for your specific application.

While I would tell you that p2plan is best website around Thomas would argue that zerowastenetwork is clearly the superior website. The funny thing is that he created them both. The southwest network for zero waste is one of eight regional centers that work together to promote P2 on a national scale.

They work within their regions to identify successful practices that can then be transferred to the national level and then promote on the regional level those tools identified in other regions. Key focuses are training and assistance while providing an on-line presence. Of particular note this service is free to all here except those from the EPA.

The EPA maintains a collection of sector guides. The guides provide BMP and pollution prevention options for their respective industry.

If you can’t find your sector there Try the P2Rx Topic Hubs. These resources are updated by the centers. They have links to p2 documents and fact sheets about each subject.

If you still can’t find what you are looking for you can send an email to P2Tech. There are over 150 p2 professionals associated with this website. It is free to all. If you are new to this resource you can go to the archive, most all topics have been discussed over the last 14 years.

Moving away from the internet information. We’ve all heard the saying “one man’s trash is another man’s treasure.” Renew proves that point year in and year out. The program acts a sort of match.com for materials. It can be viewed online or by picking up a copy of the semi-annual catalog.

Here is an example of a recent success from Renew. A wire manufacturer uses sulfuric acid to clean the wire. Eventually the sulfuric acid gets to dirty and must be dumped. A chemical company identified this off spec sulfuric acid as a pre-cursor to one of their products Ferrous Sulfate. As a result of this exchange the company not only saves 2.5 million in disposal fees but they also earned 315000.

We won’t be able to help everyone and that is ok. There are other organizations available to provide assistance. TMAC goes beyond environmental constraints in providing manufacturing assistance.

Of particular interest to Texas and possibly this group is Virgil our virtual engineer. The P2planner is an online tool designed to walk you through the process of preparing a plan. It acts as a virtual engineer by providing a set of options for a particular process and by collecting specific options suggested by other users of the tool.

150 options were originally entered, while users of the planner many unlike yourselves have enter 5 times more. The planner in many ways has become a virtual think tank. Allowing engineers and p2 professionals around the nation to interact and develop more and better options. Similarly we have found that the mini think tanks that are developed as part of the day 2 exercise will identify a number of very exciting and encouraging p2 opportunities as you share with one another.

Here is a sampling of the user submitted ideas. We see a wide range of ideas being presented from A C C ,and of course they were choosing composting as there option, to foaming process. Now foaming process is one that caught our eye because it was entered by one company and then quickly utilized by several others. Upon further investigation we found that this was being evaluated because of regulatory changes that were phasing out the old cfc materials being used.

This is the case study database. There are over 445 case studies available. You can search by industry process or by company. These are developed in conjunction with the companies and are maintained using their own words.

Results and savings are always real. We may misspeak in describing them to you but we have tried to include most of them in the printed documents.

For example. Fibergrate came to this workshop two years ago and found out about the p2planner. One of those things is this robo recycler. Not quite as impressive as a robocop but it does the job. They reduced their emissions and saved 14,000.

Because of the choice they made they were able to maintain their operations here and remain competitive.

Now I would like you to think about this a minute. If you were one of the companies who moved offshore how would an event like this affect your business? How would you get your product here to help get this industry back online? Remember all the ports were closed. Fibergrate was the only company who had made the commitment to stay here and was the only company able to respond to this need. That 14000 dollars may have been extremly minor but the opportunity to capture market share might just be priceless.