Veolia to take over Alcoa hazardous waste treatment site

Veolia, through its subsidiary Veolia North America, announced Jan. 2 that it has signed an agreement to take over Alcoa’s hazardous waste treatment site located in Gum Springs, Arkansas. With this operation, Paris-based Veolia says it is continuing the global expansion of its hazardous waste treatment and recycling activity and adding a flagship site to its existing portfolio.

The facility, located on a 1,350-acre site, currently employs 73 people. The Gum Springs facility has traditionally treated spent pot liner, a hazardous waste byproduct of the aluminum production process, for the North American smelter industry. As part of its global growth strategy in difficult-to-treat pollutions, Veolia will be looking at expanding the type of waste, as well as volume, handled at the site, as it is already permitted for the treatment and final disposal of nearly all categories of liquid and solid hazardous waste, the company says. While remaining a service provider to Alcoa through a multi-year agreement, the facility will also be expanding its services to customers throughout North America.

Veolia treats and recycles around 6 million tons of hazardous waste annually; has over 100,000 industrial, commercial or household clients; and employs 8,000 who operate a network of more than 140 facilities on five continents. In Europe, Veolia operates the two biggest hazardous waste treatment sites of the continent.

In North America, Veolia’s hazardous waste operations support industries from pharmaceutical to petrochemical and other generators. The company operates four major incineration facilities on two sites in Texas and Illinois.

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Stericycle partners with RCAP for prescription drug mail-back program targeting rural communities

Stericycle, Bannockburn, Illinois, and the Rural Community Assistance Partnership (RCAP), a non-profit network focused on improving water quality for rural and small communities across the U.S., announced that they have partnered to pilot a program focused on improving water quality and combatting the opioid crisis in rural America.

In early 2020, RCAP will be distributing 10,000 of Stericycle’s Seal&Send medication mail-back envelopes to rural communities in multiple regions across the United States. The envelopes can be used to safely and sustainably remove leftover medications from home medicine cabinets and the environment. The program allows people to mail back their unused drugs for destruction and disposal by regulated medical waste incineration, thus removing potentially harmful pharmaceuticals from water systems and landfills in these communities.

“The strength of our network is relationships with communities,” RCAP CEO Nathan Ohle says. “We are founded on the belief that partnerships make our work and impact better, and this is the perfect example of finding innovative partnerships that benefit the communities we serve.”

This first-of-its kind pilot will include an innovative approach to reaching and connecting with rural communities on the issue of safe drug disposal. RCAP will be working with six regional partners to distribute Stericycle’s Seal&Send envelopes, along with educational information about safe drug disposal, in water utility bills or via other solid waste programs being coordinated in these communities. RCAP regional partners are located in every state, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

“From leftover prescription drugs in the home fueling the opioid crisis to pharmaceutical contamination of waterways and drinking water, safe medication disposal is critical to protect people, the public and the planet,” Stericycle CEO Cindy Miller says. “We are proud to partner with and support the important work that RCAP is doing to protect rural communities from the negative impacts of improper medication management in the home.”

“Our mission at RCAP is to serve rural communities in addressing whatever issues they might face,” Ohle says. “Our work focuses on assisting communities in providing safe drinking water and sanitary wastewater services, and we know the harmful effects that prescription drugs can have on water sources and systems. This innovative approach is a small way to combat a powerful issue confronting communities across the country."

The waste industry as a whole is governed by strict regulations, but perhaps no other area of the business is as fraught with regulatory red tape as the process of landfill permitting and expansion.

Rumpke Waste & Recycling, Colerain Township, Ohio, is no stranger to such challenges. Founded in the 1930s, the company currently owns and operates 14 landfills. In 2019 alone, the company fought for and received approval for a 85-acre expansion of its Noble Road Landfill in Shiloh, Ohio, and for a 240-acre expansion of its Hughes Road Landfill in Colerain Township.

Though these experiences, Amanda Pratt, director of corporate communications at Rumpke, says the company has learned a number of valuable lessons regarding how to best overcome some of the hurdles inherent with the process.

Opening the lines of communication

Landfills are often an unwelcomed neighbor in the communities they reside in. Pratt says that Rumpke tries to curb some of the inevitable not in my back yard (NIMBY) pushback from residents during the permitting process by engaging stakeholders early in the process.

She says the company’s stance of having an open-door policy with its landfills has helped educate the community on the company’s operations. Moreover, she says that taking proactive steps to engage residents and regulators is the best way to educate and alleviate concerns about what an expansion might entail.

“With 14 landfills, over the years, we have learned that transparency with regulators and target audiences, including officials and neighbors around the site, is key,” Pratt says. “We keep the lines of communication open, offer tours, host open houses and send newsletters. We encourage these target audiences to see our operations firsthand, remain in the know and ask any questions [they might have]. We strive to communicate all the time, not just when there’s a public hearing or an issue.

“We also communicate openly with regulators. We are proactive versus reactive, and compliance is always our No. 1 priority. Getting to expand a site is very challenging, but if your site isn’t compliant, it’s nearly impossible.”

Beyond creating an ongoing dialogue with stakeholders, Pratt says Rumpke’s focus on constructing and managing landfills to negate potential issues before they arise helps make the permitting process easier and less contentious.

When considering an expansion, Pratt says Rumpke conducts a careful and exhaustive examination of the property, geology and topography of a site. During this preapproval process, air space calculations, construction costs and timing of the expansion are all factors the company takes into consideration. Because minimizing the landfill’s footprint is of top of mind for the company, Pratt says, “we consider how we can strategically and efficiently expand with as little impact as possible on the areas outside our property lines [when determining how we can further develop these sites].”

Putting the work in

Engagement with regulatory and community stakeholders can help ease the permitting process, but without the proper landfill operation strategies in place, landfill owners put themselves behind the eight ball before the process can even get off the ground.

“One of Rumpke’s core values is to treat others the way that they wish to be treated,” Pratt says. “This is the basis of our business operations, including our stance on landfill management. Each Rumpke landfill manager and engineer must aspire to operate a site that is invisible at the property line. This is not always easy or even possible, but we are constantly researching and implementing the best technology available to reduce landfill nuisances.”

Pratt says that the company employs a number of tactics to minimize odor, pest and traffic issues within the company’s landfill sites. To clean the company’s vehicles and the roads these vehicles travel over on-site, Rumpke uses wheel washes, truck washes, street cleaners and street flushers. To keep wind-blown trash at a minimum, Rumpke employs both litter fencing and litter crews to prevent waste from escaping the site. Additionally, working faces of the landfill are kept small and covered when not in use to limit potential disturbances. The company also deploys and monitors landfill gas to energy systems at many of its sites to reduce gas odors at the source. Finally, birds and vectors are controlled with scare tactics and on-site assistance from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

To mitigate traffic issues inside the company’s landfills, and to ensure congestion doesn’t spill out into the neighboring community, Pratt says the company works to streamline the flow of vehicles in and out of its dump sites.

“The last thing we want is for our operations to affect traffic outside our property,” she says. “We also want our trucks as well as third party disposal customers to be able to get in and out of the landfills with ease. Therefore, at all our sites, we have created scale operations and lanes to ensure efficient traffic flow. We work with counties, townships and states to make certain the public roadways can accommodate traffic without interruption as well.”

Pratt says that while handling incoming waste presents a variety of challenges, sequestering odor is perhaps the biggest issue the company has to worry about when it comes to community relations. To address this, Rumpke has devised a multistep approach.

“Trash smells, in most instances, long before we even pick it up at the curb, so we keep the working face manageable and covered when not in use,” Pratt says. “From the technology side, we have worked with chemists to create all-natural odor neutralizers made from plant and vegetable extracts and water. The odor-neutralizing solutions are specialized according to the odors we are trying to combat. For example, one mixture works best for trash odors, another minimizes gas odors and a third works to reduce compost odors. The biggest challenge we face is commercial loads that arrive with extra odors. We unload and try to bury them quickly. We also battle traditional issues like weather patterns which encourage odors to travel greater distances.”

Going the extra mile

No landfill operation, regardless of how well-run it might be, is likely to stay out of the crosshairs from disgruntled members of the community in perpetuity. That’s why when issues or concerns do arise, Rumpke is quick to act. Additionally, Pratt says that citizens are naturally wary about landfills in their communities—especially ones that are cloaked in secrecy. The company offers tours, hosts open houses, sends regular newsletter updates, visits homes, conducts presentations and creates dedicated webpages to keep stakeholders informed of the goings-on at its landfills and the status of its expansion plans.

“People don’t think much about their trash and what happens after it leaves the curb, if we don’t share the facts through communications, that’s when misinformation spreads and even fear occurs,” Pratt says. “Seeing is believing, we want people to see and understand the environmental safeguards we put in place as well as the processes we use. If they have questions, we want to provide the answers and shape the narrative.”

Pratt concluded, “At the end of the day, landfill management, expansion and permitting is about balancing the needs of a community, the business and the environment to progress in a positive direction.”

The author is the editor of Waste Today magazine and can be contacted at aredling@gie.net.

Waste Pro signs deal to become the official waste services provider to the Memphis Grizzlies

Waste Pro, Longwood, Florida, announced Jan. 6 that the company has signed a three-year sponsorship as the official waste services provider to the Memphis Grizzlies and the FedExForum, located in downtown Memphis, Tennessee. The partnership, which began during the current 2019-20 NBA season, will continue through the 2021-22 season.

With this partnership, Waste Pro will provide solid waste collection for all Memphis Grizzlies games and events at FedExForum.

Waste Pro says company artwork will adorn trash containers and Memphis residents may hear about Waste Pro on the radio and see trucks decked out in honor of the Grizzlies throughout the city.

This is the first multiyear sponsorship Waste Pro has launched in the Memphis region with a professional sports team. Waste Pro began serving Tennessee residents in 2015 after being selected by the town of Arlington, with trucks running out of the company’s Southaven office. Waste Pro began servicing nearby Germantown the following year, and opened an office in Memphis in 2019 after being selected as the hauler for a section of the city.

“This is an exciting time for us here in Memphis,” Waste Pro Regional Vice President Roland Joyner says. “Waste Pro has grown exponentially in this area over the last few years, and we’re proud to partner with two fantastic institutions in the Memphis Grizzlies and FedExForum.”

“We are pleased and excited to partner with Waste Pro to service Grizzlies games and all games, concerts and events at FedExForum,” Grizzlies President Jason Wexler says. “Operating and servicing FedExForum is a complex task, and we look forward to sharing the story of how Waste Pro helps us operate effectively so we can collectively make every event at FedExForum a special one for our fans.”