Handling Hazardous Waste—What You Need to Know

Business owners are constantly looking for new areas of operation that can be trimmed of “fat” to save expenses. One area often overlooked is the disposal cost of hazardous waste from operations. With oil prices surging worldwide, management has begun to look more closely at the costs associated with the purchase of solvents (chemicals) and their subsequent disposal after use. It is becoming clear that there is a major potential for savings in how these “waste” streams are handled.

The traditional solution for many firms has been to have the local service company to come in, assess the nature, volume and frequency of service required and devise a program to pickup and replace the needed solvents. This is easy and relatively transparent to the operation of the company.

However, the cost is ongoing and in retrospect, it represents the sale of a reusable product which then needs to be replaced for an additional cost! If selling a reusable product makes no sense when it must be replaced, then what alternative can be more suitable? In-house solvent recovery!

Purchasing an appropriate solvent recovery system is much less daunting a task then it had been in the past. Companies have fully automated solutions which don’t require full time personnel to operate. In addition, there are machines available from small, entry level volumes as small as 2 gallon batches, to units which will recover hundreds to thousands of gallons per day and remain simple to operate.

These solutions are providing companies with cost saving solutions to reduce their hazardous waste disposal problems with equipment that in many cases has a less than one year payback. In addition this equipment may be eligible for government tax credits for environmental purchases.

Virtually every industry imaginable is a candidate for solvent recovery equipment. The obvious industries are those who use solvents for paint cleanup or parts cleaning for example. In reality almost every industry uses some chemicals for cleaning or in the manufacturing process. The key to the benefit of in-house solvent recovery, or distillation is matching the correctly sized still with the volume of waste chemicals being produced.

Once this is correctly assessed the payback for purchasing equipment is generally easily determined.

By tallying the cost of disposal and the cost of replacement, the user can easily see what is being expended for a service company. In general, in-house solvent recovery should provide 99+% recovery of the solvent portion of a waste stream. This is significant when you realize that you are buying this product over and over again and paying for its disposal at the same time!

In addition service company costs for disposal never go down, they increase with time.

Since most chemicals are oil based products, they also always become more expensive. In-house solvent recovery is a smart alternative for any executive who is looking for new ways to make the business more efficient and save money at the same time.

In general, most companies who study the implications of in-house solvent recovery immediately determine that it is the right thing to do. Companies that perceive the process to be more costly than service alternatives are often not properly calculating the costs and payback properly.

The choice to continue service company operations is often an expedient or the analysis is being done at too low a level in the company with no oversight by the appropriate financial operations in the organization. Capital projects with less than a 1 year payback are, in general, never turned down.

In today’s difficult business environment where every dollar saved is vital, in-house solvent recovery is a potential source of real dollar savings. Management need only take a few minutes to determine the viability of an in-house waste reduction program through solvent recovery. The secondary benefit is the “good neighbor” tag that accrues to the organization by becoming a “Green” operation through in-house solvent recovery. State and Federal EPA departments look fondly on the growth of this technology since it reduces the transport of hazardous materials on the countries highways and thus reduces the liability for potential spills or accidents.

There are a number of viable providers of solvent recovery equipment in today’s market. An interested company need only to go online and search for any of the “key words” like solvent recycling, solvent distillation, solvent recovery, etc. to come up with an appropriate list to consider. These providers will be more than happy to discuss in-house recycling and it’s benefits as an alternative to service company costs.