Surface finishing of metal products is a major manufacturing operation performed in thousands of production shops to provide weather‐resistant, wear‐resistant, and aesthetically pleasing finishes for thousands of manufactured products.1 Surface‐finishing technology involves direct atom‐to‐atom bonding between a base material (such as steel, aluminum, brass, or plastics) and a metal or organic surface top coating that provides the desired material performance and appearance properties. Surface pretreatment is crucial for proper performance and durability of the produced part. Cleaning and oxide removal is critical, so pretreatment processes usually involve many tanks with various purposes. Multistep surface preparation processes are generally employed to remove oils, soiling and dirty materials, old coatings, corrosion products, residual cutting fluids, brazing residuals, pickling acid residuals, cleaner residuals, etc. The surface preparation process removes contaminants, preserves the cleaned surface, and/or modifies the surface for the next coating. After the finishing process, the parts require rinsing/cleaning to remove residual plating solution. These baths, both plating and cleaning, ultimately are exhausted because of depletion of strength or buildup of impurities and, as a result, become major waste streams (Burckle and Ferguson 2005; USEPA 2001).
In the past, pollution control in the metal‐finishing industry has been achieved primarily through end‐of‐pipe treatment. Facilities added waste treatment systems as a final process step to meet regulatory discharge limits to municipal sewers or as direct dischargers. This approach results in the production of residual sludges contaminated with heavy metals that require appropriate pretreatment for environmentally safe disposal (the so‐called “Hammer Provisions” of the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act that apply to hazardous waste disposal in the United States). In the mid‐1980s, various facilities began integrating “pollution prevention” into their operations to reduce the amount of wastewater generated and treated. However, the speed of adoption has been relatively slow, most noticeably in smaller facilities (USEPA 1982, 1985).
The most logical and efficient approach to effectively achieve environmental protection is by preventing pollution. Prevention is achieved using techniques that reduce, eliminate, or recycle/reuse waste materials so that the generation of waste is eliminated, avoiding the need for waste disposal, and wastes that are generated are handled responsibly, either through recovery and recycling to displace other material needs and/or to conserve energy, or minimized and made safe for disposal into the environment. The metal‐finishing industry began to apply pollution prevention principles to reduce process waste emissions in the mid‐1980s, but there were no public statistics generated of the impact on pollution avoided or economic benefit accrued. In discussing the progress of domestic metal‐finishing industry in transitioning to operations based upon pollution prevention, we begin by describing the National Metal Finishing Strategic Goals Program (SGP) initiated by the US Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) in 1998 in cooperation with industry and public interest stakeholders (USEPA 1998, 2001).
National Metal Finishing Strategic Goals Program
This was the first nationwide program initiated by the USEPA to build voluntary participation in a compliance program by providing incentives in return for a real commitment to reducing pollution to levels below those required for compliance. The SGP was created to address environmental problems and institutional barriers to achieving compliance in a number of industries. It was designed to provide a working relation that facilitates and encourages companies to go beyond environmental compliance to pollution prevention–based operations. SGP member companies were offered incentives, resources, and a means for removing regulatory and policy barriers as they work to achieve specific environmental goals.
The SGP program brought together stakeholders to identify important issues, conduct demonstration projects, and develop consensus policy recommendations that offered opportunities for reducing pollution. The stakeholders included industry, labor, environmental groups, state and local government, and other federal agencies. The metal‐finishing industry was represented by the National Association of Metal Finishers, American Electroplaters and Surface Finishers Society, Metal Finishing Suppliers Association, and Surface Finishing Industry Council. Through the SGP (USEPA 2001), the participants worked together to improve environmental performance and the bottom line.
Participation required top management commitment to the implementation and maintenance of an approved Environmental Management System (EMS). The EMS has caused management to take careful note of the true costs of pollution and institute policies and procedures to eliminate this waste at its source (USEPA 2003a). The results of these efforts have provided the first large‐scale quantification of the power of pollution prevention for achieving significant reductions in pollution and the resulting economic benefits in the metal‐finishing industry. The SGP program was designed to help a metal‐finishing company achieve its goals – both environmental and economic. A wide variety of state and local SGP resources (USEPA 2001) were available to provide a company with the tools need to get the job done. These include the following:
- Free, non‐regulatory environmental audits
- Funding for environmental technologies
- On‐site technical assistance in (evaluation and planning) achieving compliance and improving pollution prevention, safety, and health measures
- Free assistance from interns to help fill out the SGP data worksheets
- Free workshops on energy, water, and waste reduction
- Regulatory flexibility
- EMS training
- Public recognition
All parties benefited from the use of these tools. A few of the advantages listed in the project report are listed here.
- Companies received the incentives and resources needed to take the risk of going beyond compliance requirements.
- As the participating companies employ less‐polluting technologies, waste is reduced, less pollution is discharged to the environment, and the plant saves money, becoming more cost efficient and competitive.
- As the results demonstrated in the participating plants are employed by other plants to reduce pollution and improve competitiveness, the practices of pollution prevention are spread throughout the industry.
- The industry as a whole benefits from the positive action of SGP member companies.
- As the metal‐finishing industry becomes increasingly more self‐regulated, government regulators – from the EPA to the local publicly owned treatment works – save time and money.
The SGP has seven environmental performance goals (USEPA 2001) that form the core of the program (see Table 7.1). Through the end of 2000, many participants had already made significant progress toward meeting the goals, which translated into real environmental gains:
- 380 million gal of water conservation
- 120 million lb of hazardous waste not sent to landfills
- 665 000 lb of organic chemicals not released to the environment.
A comparison of the reductions achieved through 2000 and 2003 shows continuing and significant improvements in pollution prevention. This continued progress of the participants is a positive indicator of the benefits of a program driven by the employment of the EMS. The SGP participants were provided free, non‐regulatory environmental audits and access to technical support in achieving compliance and improving pollution prevention. Data like this readily demonstrates the power of the EMS management tool to reduce pollution. But to see how this progress was achieved, we must examine the role of pollution prevention (P2) technologies in enabling the reductions.
Table 7.1 Progress towards SGP goals.
| SGP goal | Average achievement by SGP metal finishers (over all projects) | |
| 2000 | 2003 | |
| 1) 50% reduction in water usage 2) 25% reduction in energy use 3) 90% reduction in organic toxic release inventory (TRI) releases 4) 50% reduction in metals released to water and air 5) 50% reduction in land disposal of hazardous sludge 6) 98% metals utilization 7) Reduction in human exposure to toxic materials in the facility and surrounding community | 41% reduction 14% reduction 77% reduction 58% reduction 36% reduction 17% utilization factor 51% of activities accomplished | 56% reduction 41% reduction 84% reduction 65% reduction 48% reduction 64% utilization factor 85% of activities accomplished |
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