Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, April 8, 1990 TAG: 9004060879
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: F-7 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BY MARTHA M. HAMILTON THE WASHINGTON POST
DATELINE: RICHMOND - LENGTH: Long
While 9.6 billion new cans marched out of Reynolds's manufacturing plants to beer and soft-drink producers around the country, 9.7 billion passed through shredders into an industrial afterlife.
From recycling 1 million pounds of aluminum in 1968, when the company opened the nation's first recycling center in Los Angeles, the effort has expanded to the point where last year Reynolds processed 865 million pounds of recycled aluminum. While other industries are just beginning to grapple with recycling and other approaches to the mounting problem of solid waste disposal, recycling has become a way of life for the aluminum industry.
"The aluminum industry might be described as a yardstick for success compared to other industries nationally, such as plastics in particular," said Allen Hershkowitz, a solid-waste disposal expert for the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental group.
"Luck gave us a head start," said Richard G. Holder, Reynolds president and chief operating officer.
When the company first got into the recycling business, aluminum cans were a relatively new product challenging steel cans for the market. Aluminum had to fend off criticism that it was less durable than steel and that it lacked the biodegradability of steel cans, which eventually rust. The aluminum industry turned to recycling both to counter that image problem and to help head off state environmental laws that would require the payment of deposits on bottles and aluminum beverage cans.
But if it was a combination of luck, public relations and the threat of such "bottle bills" that launched aluminum recycling, it is economics that have kept it going.
"Certainly the aluminum industry has been one of the best in recycling," said Cynthia Pollock Shea, a senior researcher with The Worldwatch Institute, a natural resources research group. "One of the main reasons is the major energy savings associated with recycled aluminum."
Shea said she is concerned, however, that aluminum recycling may have plateaued because of lower energy costs and the fading threat of bottle bills. No bottle bills have been adopted since 1983, although California has adopted a variation on such legislation, she said.
Holder concedes that Reynolds' environmental efforts are driven by more than mere altruism.
Recycling is "environmentally sound, but we also look at it as a profit center," said Holder. "We look at the aluminum can as an energy bank, because 95 percent of the energy required for aluminum is consumed in between the mining and the making of the aluminum ingot."
The aluminum industry is a large consumer of electric power. To the extent that companies can recycle instead, they don't have to pay for that energy. In addition, the greater capital investment required for primary aluminum production is replaced by the smaller investment required for reclaiming aluminum, Holder said.
Unlike materials such as paper, which breaks down as it is recycled, aluminum maintains much of its value and is marketable not just to can manufacturers, but also to automobile and aircraft manufacturers. Reynolds relies on recycled aluminum for nearly a third of its supply, said Vice President Richard N. Bolling, who heads the company's recycling and reclamation division.
Industrywide, the recycling rate for aluminum is high compared with other materials. The aluminum industry now recycles more than 55 percent of its product and predicts that percentage will continue to grow. In contrast, the U.S. paper industry announced earlier this month that it was setting a goal of 40 percent paper recovery by 1995.
Reynolds buys cans and other types of used aluminum at 722 locations nationwide at prices that range anywhere from 1.5 to 3 cents per can depending on the market. Some centers also take used screen doors, old awnings, foil and other types of aluminum.
The company also is experimenting with a new type of recycling center that would use "reverse vending machines" to collect scrap. Customers could put cans into the machine and get money back, rather than vice versa.
According to Bolling, although some poor and homeless people may supplement their income by collecting and selling aluminum cans, the average recycler has an income of $30,000.
Customers at Reynolds' Richmond recycling center on a recent winter afternoon included Kathy Hutton, who started collecting cans in the late 1970s to help fund a local soccer association. But Hutton became a serious recycler three years ago after news accounts of the "garbage barge" from Islip, N.Y., that sailed 6,000 miles in search of a landfill that would accept its malodorous cargo. "I said - no more," Hutton said.
"I'm pretty compulsive," said Hutton, a nurse from Ashland, who puts up a bag at the hospital where she works so that co-workers can pitch in their soft-drink cans.
Hutton emptied bags full of cans into the hopper at the center and collected $5.46. At the center a magnet separates steel cans from the aluminum ones. The aluminum cans are then weighed, flattened and loaded onto a trailer that takes them to a Williamsburg plant that shreds them.
Reynolds has 26 shredding plants that ship popcorn-size pellets to reclamation plants, where the aluminum is melted and cast into ingots. The ingots are rolled into can sheets, coiled and shipped to can plants.
Holder said that Reynolds has pioneered other methods of reducing the litter attributable to aluminum cans. The company patented the process through which tab-tops remain attached to cans rather than coming loose to be tossed on the ground.
Over the years Reynolds has also designed and redesigned the can to use less aluminum in the first place. Cans that once weighed in at 48 pounds per 1,000 now weigh 27 pounds for the same number. Among other things, the cans have been stepped in at their tops and bottoms so that the ends of the cans require less material. The reduction in can weight is a selling point to beverage producers because it translates into a savings on shipping and handling. As a can manufacturer, Reynolds also benefits from having to buy less material.
According to Holder, Reynolds's environmental success with its aluminum operations has spurred it to apply those same standards to other areas, including the workplace. Other company products, such as Reynolds Wrap and Cut-Rite wax paper, are recyclable and sold in recyclable packaging.
The company also prints its own cartons and supplies printed materials for some of its customers through a process that uses water-based instead of solvent-based ink. The result has been a substantial reduction in emissions, according to Reynolds.
All these efforts have helped the company save money in ways it may never have anticipated.
Reynolds, operating two printing plants, was faced with an Environmental Protection Agency requirement to reduce emissions from those facilities by 65 percent. Modifying its equipment to continue using solvents would have cost approximately $30 million, said Robert Waldrop, vice president of Reynolds's flexible packaging division. "That way it was going to be a very costly endeavor, and it wasn't going to add a dime of profit," he said.
But thanks to an alternative technology that allowed it to switch to water-based ink, the company lowered its ink costs and reduced its insurance bill. Now Reynolds is looking for other companies that might be interested in licensing the technology.
Recently Reynolds acquired Presto Products Inc., a major plastic bag manufacturer, and Mount Vernon Plastics Corp., which makes plastic containers, as part of its push to double its consumer products business.
"We set as our objective that we want to recycle - end to finished product - as much plastic as we sell," said Holder. "This is an important objective for us. It's obviously environment-oriented, but, at the same time, we're going to approach it on a business basis and make sure it's profitable for us."
by CNB