Designer Wastes

So‐called designer wastes can serve as direct feedstock to another sector, or, if properly processed through a conversion technology, as processed feedstock. If the beer industry for example, used a sugar‐based cleanser instead of a caustic cleanser for its bottle‐washing process, the discharge water could serve as a direct feed to fish ponds, without needing any conversion. Yet other solutions will require installation assistance in adjusting or adapting material flows within the client’s processes so that its waste output is in an acceptable form.

Building industrial clusters may involve working upstream within a facility to modify its production process so that the waste is produced in an acceptable “designer” form for conversion. Or, perhaps downstream, working with the purchaser industry, to help it modify its processes so that it can accept the converted waste.

This means that the involved engineering consultants must become familiar with the products and materials provided by suppliers to the producer and the materials needed by the purchaser of the designer wastes. All parties must have access to a database of specific information about the level of impurities acceptable in each final product. For example, companies that produce basic material inputs (such as plastics, oils, lubricants, and papers) deal in high volumes and some manufacturing processes can tolerate impurities. These companies are already experienced in their own refining processes and may also be knowledgeable about the manufacturing requirements of their customers, but their expertise may not extend to particular impurities present in the producer’s waste stream. The database can provide the information necessary to complete the connections.

Reinvent Regulatory Policies

Experienced professionals are probably already aware of how government policies inadvertently inhibit creativity in reuse of wastes. These policies can also inhibit formation of effective industrial clusters. For example, breweries are regulated as an industry and the facilities are generally located in industrial areas. However, to make efficient use of their discharge water in aquaculture, breweries should be located in agricultural zones. Similarly, regulations aimed at providing a market for recycled newsprint need to be revised so that technologies that produce a better grade of paper can flourish – and allow more complete reuse of all the other by‐products associated with complete de‐inking.

Ironically, ZD goals are inhibited in the United States by regulations pursuant to the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act of 1976 (RCRA). Transferring “wastes” among the members of industrial clusters is often prohibited by RCRA because its regulatory net entangles all wastes, whether hazardous or not. Its broad scope has the unintended consequences of creating disincentives to invest in recovery technologies and blocking progress toward pollution prevention and recycling. RCRA waste classifications can put kinks in potential closed‐loop systems. Indeed, as Robert Herman (1989) put it, “the essence of the environmental crisis is not nearly so much bad actors as the whole, often contradictory structure of incentives in the economy.” Regulatory policies need to be reinvented to foster development of breakthrough conversion technologies and encourage cross‐sector markets for designer wastes.