Report on materials exchange programs could help ease NYC trash burden

By Roger Segelken

The success of regional materials exchange programs, which link businesses that have commodities to be disposed of with buyers who can use those materials, is proving that reuse saves money for business and municipalities.

That is the conclusion of a panel of experts, convened by the Waste Management Institute at Cornell, to survey national trends. The advice provided by the panel to NY Wa$teMatch, a materials exchange program designed by the New York City Department of Sanitation to give new life to the city's commercial and industrial wastes, is summarized in a new report available from Cornell and on the Internet.

"For a city like New York, which will be closing its Fresh Kills landfill on Staten Island in 2001, reducing the waste stream by reclaiming materials that still have a useful life makes perfect sense," says Ellen Z. Harrison, director of the Cornell institute. "Businesses will save money, New York will be a better place to do business, the cost of waste-disposal for everyone in the region may ultimately decrease and the environment will benefit."

Last November the Cornell institute brought together representatives of several successful waste-exchange programs for a "materials exchange roundtable," sponsored by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Region 2, on behalf of the New York City Department of Sanitation. Among the participants were CALMAX (California Materials Exchange Program), Iowa Waste Exchange, New Hampshire Materials Exchange, Northeast Industrial Waste Exchange and SEMREX (the Southeast Minnesota Recyclers' Exchange).

The panel's report is published on the web at http://www.cfe.cornell.edu/wmi/WastRed/MatlExch.html and is available from the Cornell Waste Management Institute by calling 255-1187.

Materials exchanges, both privately operated and government-affiliated, enable businesses and institutions to reuse or recycle materials from other businesses. A materials exchange transaction could link a business that needs shipping pallets with another company that needs to get rid of pallets. Or help a home builder with truckloads of vinyl siding scraps save the cost of waste disposal by matching them to manufacturers of plastic furniture.

The experts shared information on how to identify likely participants and motivate them to exchange materials. Use of new technologies to keep track of exchanges and to reach out to potential participants hold promise, but the panel observed that many businesses and institutions may not yet be online so that traditional methods such as catalogs are still needed. The roundtable report includes the following recommendations to materials exchange programs:

• Promote success stories through publicity in newsletters, trade shows and the media.
  
• Work with recycling coordinators and economic development experts since they are aware of what companies are discarding and what materials have potential uses.
  
• Use vendors who travel between companies (such as computer service providers) and repeat customers to build an informal network to promote materials exchange.
  
• Inventory purchases as well as wastes when conducting business audits.
  
• Look at new businesses prior to start-up so they can be designed for minimum waste; identify opportunities to use recycled materials and opportunities for reuse of waste.
  
• Convince companies to target their waste to specific users, modifying it to meet users' needs.