Expansion of the scrap industry requires appropriate guidelines to secure the health and safety of employees, while market confidence will be bolstered by having suitable recycling standards that recognize the value of the material and the individual nature of this industry.
 Metallic scrap waiting to be recycled. A distinction should be made between scrap and recycling. photo: ERP |
In today’s consumer-oriented world, the waste and scrap industries are vital to health and commerce. While they share common burdens - such as public perception (or occasional misperception) and quality, environmental, and health & safety (QEH&S) issues - they must also be recognized as distinct. In the scrap industry’s general view, the scrap industry reprocesses materials for new uses, while the waste industry removes materials that have no further use and no intrinsic or recoverable value. The importance of this distinction is exemplified in the boxed text below.
In the words of Robin Wiener, President of ISRI (the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries), ‘Scrap is not waste and recycling is not disposal. Successful policy will make this distinction in order to ensure that electronic recycling continues to attract investment and thus sustain and increase overall recycling capacity.’
The commercial implications of this distinction are significant and, as a result, both industries require a separate framework tailored to their respective market conditions and targeted to support long-term development.
In order to optimize our ability to handle the apparently limitless stream of material for recycling and disposal, both the scrap and waste industries must constantly seek ways to more efficiently segregate scrap and waste into their appropriate streams. Confidence is paramount; and this can be manifest in different forms.
A healthy market depends on public confidence in the final output from the plant. Operators rely on a regulatory framework that supports their industry. And industry employees should feel confident that they are working in a safe environment.
Securing a safe workplace
The US Bureau of Labor Statistics, which lumps our industries together for many of their statistical tables, ranks our industries, combined, as the fifth most dangerous industry in the US labour force when accidental deaths are tabulated.
This level of risk is unacceptable. Naturally our industries pose certain inherent potential hazards, but there is simply no excuse for any workplace to be unsafe. It is vital to recognize and acknowledge these potential hazards and to establish work practices to effectively manage them in a way that protects employees and others from harm.
Accidents, injuries and deaths in the workplace are costly burdens on the industry, in medical claims, lost time, and damage to facilities and equipment. Expensive as they are, however, those costs pale in comparison to the loss of life or limb. The number-one goal, each and every day, must be to do all we can to ensure that every employee returns to their family at the end of the day as whole and uninjured as they were when they reported to work that morning. For the scrap industry, this comes in the form of a commitment to process scrap materials safely, or not at all.
The need for new standards
The prevalence of workplace injuries is just one of many indicators suggesting the need for new standards - standards that provide the framework for a comprehensive management system. In today’s world, manufacturers must be able to meet the demand for more content-specific materials. Meeting these specifications requires better quality standards for the input materials supplied by the scrap industry. Addressing these quality-related issues, while managing compliance with mandatory safety and environmental regulations, can be a monumental task. Different sectors are responding to this challenge in different ways. Two examples are shown in the boxes to the left and right.
RIOS - a new standard
ISRI has embraced this challenge by creating the Recycling Industry Operating Standard (RIOS). RIOS is an integrated system designed to help the scrap-recycling companies manage their QEH&S issues in a single, unified manner. It is the only integrated system developed specifically for the scrap-recycling industry.
Standards are nothing new, particularly to the European community. For nearly 60 years, the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) has been the recognized leader in creating and managing standards in a variety of areas. ISO standards are recognized worldwide. Their impact has helped many companies improve industrial and manufacturing operations to the point that many consuming industries have come to require suppliers to implement various standards.
Similarly, RIOS seeks to provide a roadmap to help scrap recyclers excel in QEH&S areas by eliminating inefficiencies, problems, regulatory violations and accidents that can affect their current profitability as well as their future viability.
RIOS is based on the essential elements of ISO 9001 for quality, ISO 14001 for environment, and OHSAS 18001 for health and safety. Each of these programmes is recognized for its individual strength and depth, but their template is intentionally broad in order to address a host of manufacturing issues.
RIOS is industry-specific. It excels because it eliminates duplicative efforts that are found in separately implementing ISO 9001, ISO 14001 and OHSAS 18001, thus making it less expensive and less time-consuming to implement as well as better designed to address these issues in our real-world operations. RIOS is designed to be functionally equivalent to all three standards and can be a viable QEH&S management system for even the smallest scrap recycling company.
ISRI has spent many years developing RIOS. A considerable part of that development process was dedicated to the creation of a unique guide to help users with implementation. While individual companies can use RIOS to self-certify in order to improve operations, RIOS provides for third-party certification that will allow companies to market themselves using the RIOS-certified label.
RIOS has been recognized by the ANSI-ASQ National Accreditation Board, the US accreditation body for management systems. The programme is currently undergoing test implementation at a handful of scrap facilities in the US.
RIOS will help the scrap industry meet our goals of an industry-specific QEH&S programme that, when implemented, will result in cleaner, safer, better managed plants and yards, with an anticipated side result of improved profitability. Further, attention to these important issues polishes the image of our entire industry.
The future of any industry depends on continuous improvement, regulatory compliance, and attention to quality, safety and standards. We expect RIOS to quickly become the roadmap to the future for the scrap-recycling industry.
For more information on ISRI and RIOS, visit the websites at www.isri.org and www.rios4qehs.org.
Frank Cozzi is Chair of the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries, Inc., US.
e-mail: frankc@cozzigroup.com
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E-waste or E-scrap?
The Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries, Inc. (ISRI) recently played host to the US Under Secretary of Commerce for Technology, Robert C. Cresanti, as he announced the release of a new study entitled ‘Recycling Technology Products: An Overview of E-Waste Policy Issues’.
Despite praise for the overall study, ISRI was concerned by use of the term ‘e-waste’ in the report. It suggests the term ‘e-scrap’ would more accurately describe recyclable materials from electronic devices. The report acknowledges the existence of both terms.
‘The Commerce Department study hopes to promote market-based solutions to electronics recycling issues,’ said ISRI’s President Robin Wiener. ‘Yet one of the greatest challenges faced in this industry is the improper designation of recyclable materials as “waste”, often leading to legislative and regulatory complications that are unnecessarily burdensome to recycling.’
The consequences of labelling recyclable materials as ‘waste’ were demonstrated by ISRI in a letter to Senator Jeffords of Vermont, sponsor of the Recycling Investment Saves Energy (RISE) Act. The letter states that because recycling is perceived by some as a ‘waste’ activity, burdens such as obtaining proper and adequate insurance for what recyclers really do rather than what others think recyclers do is a real problem. In one case, an insurance carrier did not renew a policy because the carrier determined incorrectly that the recycling industry was engaged in ‘waste treatment’ activities. The entire letter can be read at www.isri.org/jeffords
Standards for retreading tyres in Europe
In April 2006, the European Commission announced new standards for the tyre-retreading process that will help to secure the quality of such tyres, bolster confidence in this market and reduce the amount of tyres ending up in the waste stream.
All newly retreaded tyres sold in the EU must now align with the requirements of UNECE Regulations (United Nations Economic Commission for Europe). These regulations introduce similar standards of safety and quality control for retreaded tyres as for new tyres.
 photo: Edward Milford |
Retreading is a frequent practice, particularly for some of the heavier vehicle categories like trucks, buses and trailers. More than 50% of these vehicles currently run with retreaded tyres on the streets of the EU. Setting safety requirements will also enhance the use of retreaded tyres.
New EPA standards for handling cathode ray tubes
The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is streamlining the federal hazardous waste management requirements for cathode ray tubes (CRTs) and CRT glass destined for recycling. These simplified standards aim to increase the collection and recycling of CRTs.
EPA Assistant Administrator Susan Bodine commented: ‘A discarded CRT represents an opportunity lost. This rule will help encourage the reuse and recycling of CRTs, which puts these resources back to productive use, rather than into the nation’s landfills’.
 photo: NJ Department of Environmental Protection |
Under the new regulations, used, unbroken CRTs are not regulated as hazardous waste unless they are stored for more than a year. And used, broken CRTs are not regulated as hazardous waste as long as certain good-housekeeping practices are followed.
