Government » DOD P2 Partnership

Solid Waste & Recycling Work Team

Purpose | Solid Waste and Recycling Guide | Impediments | Resources | Construction and Demolition | Carpet | Benefits

The Department of Defense (DoD) is the largest employer in Georgia, and more importantly, one of Georgia's largest generators of waste. It is natural that the Pollution Prevention Assistance Division (P²AD) would be interested in working with the installations in Georgia to help them reduce their waste. So in 1998, P²AD established a partnership with DoD. As part of the partnership, four work teams were created, one of which deals with solid waste issues. The work team has made great strides in the two years since its creation.

Purpose

The DoD Solid Waste and Recycling Work Team (Work Team) was established to focus on solid waste/recycling issues facing DoD installations in Georgia. During the initial facilitated Work Team meeting, the work team members identified three priority solid waste and recycling issues on which to focus. The three issues include: household hazardous waste (HHW), construction & demolition (C&D) reuse & recycling, and solid waste streams that don't have a market for recycling.

Structure of Meetings

Since June 1998, the Work Team has held nine meetings. At first, the location of the meeting rotated from base to base so that the members could tour the installation's recycling facility. This provided an opportunity for the members to learn ideas from other bases, particularly how the materials collected are processed as well as the layout of the facility. Since the members have visited each base, the Work Team now holds meetings at Warner Robins, which is centrally located to most members, unless the meeting is held in conjunction with another meeting.

In addition to working on team projects, the team members discuss at each meeting one particular waste stream that is either problematic or generated in high volumes (e.g., fluorescent lamps, wood waste and mattresses.) Members bring copies of contracts, provide the names of the recyclers they use, and have even discussed the idea of possibly pooling resources together. For example, there is interest in trying to start a joint project to collect wood waste. The Marine Corps Logistics Base in Albany has a dynamic program to repair and reuse wooden pallets that are shipped to the base. It is hoped that an arrangement can be made to expand that service or to start additional pallet repair operations at other bases. There is also time at the meeting for members to share information (e.g., upcoming conferences and new Executive Orders).

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Summary of Team Accomplishments

Solid Waste and Recycling Guide

The primary focus of the Work Team has been to develop the Solid Waste and Recycling Resource Guide to assist program managers in establishing or expanding solid waste and recycling initiatives at their installations. The Guide will be divided into chapters on household hazardous waste (HHW), construction and demolition debris (C&D), recycling, pesticide usage and management, composting, and buying recycled products. Each chapter will follow a similar format and contain information regarding

• education
• the types of programs including case studies
• sample promotional/training materials with templates including clip art and camera ready art
• resources
• laws/regulations
• tracking forms
• liability issues
• websites.

Some chapters will contain additional sections pertinent to the topic, such as a sample performance work statement. Once complete, the guide will be available in hard copy, CD ROM, and on the partnership's web site. Since the files for the brochures and other promotional materials can be placed on the CD, this should eliminate the need for the program manager to have to recreate the file.

Once the guide is finished, the intent is to make the Guide available to those outside Georgia. The Regional DOD Pollution Prevention Partnership is planning to use the Guide as a model to develop a more comprehensive pollution prevention guide.

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Identification of Impediments to Recycling and Solid Waste Management

Another function of the work team is to identify areas where the work team can collectively work together to change a procedure/rule that impedes implementing sound, environmental practices for managing solid waste. One such impediment was the lack of guidance on the storage and disposal requirements for HHW collected and managed on-site at the installation. One of the initial projects that the Work Team undertook as part of the development of the HHW chapter in the Guide was to request written guidance from Georgia EPD regarding the management of HHW. The Work Team received a response stating that EPD does not consider HHW as a hazardous waste and had no objection to the proposed strategy for management of HHW, thus opening the door for bases to expand programs to address HHW.

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Resource Materials

The Work Team has also created educational materials. An office waste reduction and recycling poster was developed in response to a request from Fort Gordon to have a poster to distribute on Earth Day.

The poster focuses on reducing and recycling office products. In addition to the commonly known tips such as making double-sided copies and recycling your toner cartridges, there are suggestions that are not as familiar, such as purchasing an accessory for your printer that will enable you to print double-sided copies and using the "n-up" feature on your copier. This allows you to place 4 pages on one sheet of paper. This could be used when printing drafts and would significantly reduce paper usage. More precisely, using this feature would reduce paper consumption 75% if normally printed single-sided and 50% if double-sided.

Construction and Demolition (C&D)

Of the commanders responding to a partnership survey, 76% of commanders believed that there was an opportunity to increase recycling on base, in particular, recycling of construction and demolition debris and carpet.

Since C&D was identified as a priority waste stream identified by the Work Team, many of the Work Team's activities focus on C&D.

C&D Chapter

As discussed, the Work Team is presently collecting data for the construction and demolition chapter. The Team anticipates having a draft of the chapter available by January 2001.

C&D Forum

In May 1999, the Work Team held a forum on construction and demolition. Four speakers from the industry spoke at the meeting held at Fort McPherson. Speakers discussed

• the economics of grinding and recycling C&D
• EPA's proposed lead-based paint rule
• recycling asphalt shingles and DOT's specifications for using asphalt shingles in road base
• using wallboard (gypsum) as a soil amendment
• sustainable design and construction.

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Sustainable Building, Specifications, and Waste Management Practices for Federal Facilities Training

In July, the Work Team sponsored training on green building for DOD contractors, environmental program managers, and builders. Training covered the basics of sustainable design and construction, sustainable energy systems, alternative building materials, an overview of available green building software, Internet sites and other resources, and the environmental and cost benefits of incorporating green building practices into new construction.

Carpet Projects

Since carpet is generated during both construction and demolition/renovation and a new facility opened in Georgia to recycle carpet, the work team has given special attention to carpet.

The Georgia DOD Pollution Prevention Partnership's carpet initiatives include

• Gathering carpet generation and disposal data as well as existing procurement guidelines for each base in order to understand current purchasing and management methods for carpet
• Installing recycled-content carpet (both face fiber and backing) in a high traffic area at a base to dispel fears that recycled-content carpet is inferior
• Partnering with a researcher at Georgia Tech, who has developed a web-based logistics modeling tool for recycling carpet, to investigate the economic feasibility of using military bases as regional collection facilities for carpet
• Conducting demonstration project on recycling carpet.

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Partnerships with Communities

In September 1999, the partnership hosted its first military forum to increase command support. More than 70 people attended including commanders and their top environmental support aides. One point that was made during the military forum was that commanders expressed an interest in partnering with their local communities.

The Work Team seeks opportunities to promote partnerships between the installations and their local communities. Several of the installations have partnered with their local governments on solid waste issues.

• For example, Fort Stewart accepts 250 tons of recyclables per year from local governments and a hospital that do not have the infrastructure in place to accept these materials.
• Fort McPherson has recently started accepting PET from a nearby municipality.

The Work Team is looking for additional partnership opportunities. Local communities benefit from the vast resources available to the installations, and the installations benefit from the positive recognition as a "good neighbor" in their community.

Benefits

One of the greatest benefits of participating on the Work Team that the members identified was information sharing. The Work Team meetings are a place where people from different services can come together to share ideas. By touring facilities member can see how materials are collected and processed and get ideas that they can use at their facility; but perhaps one of the biggest benefits is learning what doesn't work. By sharing their ideas and experiences, the programs are improving in quality and expanding at a faster rate. In certain circumstances, the members felt that it would have been extremely difficult if not impossible to accomplish certain tasks by themselves. The frequent meetings and shared projects of the teams also assist in relationship building, not only among the services, but also between the military, state government, and the installations' surrounding communities.

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