Volume 21, Issue 2, 1996 July/August 1996

CAMP Shows that Transition is a Growth Industry

Stephen J. Gage

CAMP, Inc., formerly the Cleveland Advanced Manufacturing Program, recognizes the long-standing polarization between governments and nongovernmental organizations of Canada and the United States that promote the reduction of toxic, persistent, bioaccumulating chemicals in the Great Lakes basin, and those businesses and industries in both countries that, understandably, resist these changes. As a third-party, neutral information and technology resource, CAMP and its regional collaborators believe we can bridge the differences and demonstrate substitution technologies that will contribute to human health benefits and ecosystem protection, as well as economic growth, throughout the Great Lakes basin.

CAMP is preparing a five-year plan to reduce the releases of these chemicals into the Great Lakes basin. This plan will facilitate work under the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement between Canada and the United States, which commits the Governments to restoring and protecting the Great Lakes through the virtual elimination of persistent toxic substances. Established in 1984, CAMP serves as a regional research, development, deployment and training resource by:

• mobilizing and leveraging academic, government, private and public resources to help manufacturers grow and improve

• fostering innovation in manufacturing enterprises through research, development, technology deployment, business assistance and training, and

• motivating and helping the manufacturers to develop people, use technology, improve business practices and modernize products, processes and facilities.

With grants from the George Gund Foundation, the Great Lakes Protection Fund and the Joyce Foundation, CAMP began its Organochlorine Project in October 1995. Of the 11,000 organochlorines in use around the world, CAMP will focus on the 100-150 that have been prioritized by international and national experts.

To foster transitions from toxic to benign chemicals, CAMP's strategy is simply to demonstrate new technologies or substitutions that produce health and economic benefits. By the end of 1996, CAMP will establish ongoing demonstration projects in metal parts cleaning, wet cleaning of clothing and fabrics, and recycling of polyvinyl chloride post-consumer waste. In the following four years, additional chemicals and industry processes will become the focus of more demonstration projects.

These first three target areas were systematically selected because of their environmental impact (based on reported releases and toxicity of released substances), the existence of proven technologies to make ready substitutions, and the opportunity to educate and encourage others to seek opportunities for safe, economic alternatives to the use of toxic chemicals.

In metal parts cleaning, CAMP has joined with U.S. and Canadian governments and private agencies to study effective alternative chemicals and processes for methyl chloroform, methylene chloride, trichloroethylene and tetrachloroethylene. Releases of these four chemicals by the eight Great Lakes states are shown in the following table.

CAMP will demonstrate, for example, that an auto parts supplier can reduce its use of these chemicals by substituting water­based chemicals and new processes in its cleaning and degreasing operations. One project that demonstrated virtual elimination of 1,1,1-trichloroethane in automobile radiator and condenser manufacturing was conducted by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, in partnership with Tennessee's Center for Clean Products and Clean Technologies and the Calsonic Manufacturing Corporation. By substituting aqueous wash processes, Calsonic's solvent-degreasing purchases were reduced from 293,000 pounds in 1990 to zero in 1994. Savings were made at virtually every stage of handling and use as shown in the second table.

In dry cleaning, CAMP is working with Chicago's Center for Neighborhood Technology and Canada's Great Lakes Pollution Prevention Centre to demonstrate and disseminate the health and cost advantages of using water-based technologies to clean clothing. These would replace current technology based on the toxic chemical tetrachloroethylene, also known as "perc." Three long-term studies on wet cleaning show reductions in the use of perc and costs, along with positive customer responses. In collaboration with U.S. and Canadian regional organizations, CAMP is planning a wet cleaning training and demonstration program, with curricula prepared by Environment Canada and the University of Massachusetts at Lowell's Toxic Use Reduction Institute.

The recycling of polyvinyl chloride (PVC) is an old practice, but it has applied mostly to scrap generated during production, or preconsumer waste. With over 10 billion pounds per year now produced in the U.S. alone, there are many opportunities to build the infrastructure to collect, recycle and manufacture new products, thus reducing the need for virgin PVC, and to divert PVC from waste streams which are headed to incinerators.

To illustrate these possibilities, Turtle Plastics of Cleveland, Ohio collects PVC automobile trim, intravenous bags and tubes, swimming pool liners, recreational rafts and other used items and reprocesses them into a range of new products. These include the wedge-shaped blocks carried on emergency vehicles to hold damaged vehicles steady during rescue operations, which will replace heavy wooden materials that absorb oil and splinter easily. Many different forms and styles of interlocking floor tiles are also produced for machine shops, food handling facilities, shower stalls, trailers and veterinarian stations. CAMP is assisting Turtle Plastics and other recyclers to seek new post-consumer resource materials and to manufacture new, finished commercial and retail products.

As an integral part of the project, CAMP is building an information resource to inform and assist companies interested in exploring organochlorine substitution technologies. This resource will grow over the project's five-year development period.

Stephen J. Gage is president of CAMP, Inc. CAMP may be contacted at the Organochlorine Project, Prospect Park Building, 4600 Prospect Avenue, Cleveland, OH 44103-4314. Telephone (216)543-6674; fax (216)543-7160; email steve.gage@camp.org or joseph.chadbourne@camp.org.

Sommaire

Le CAMP, Inc., auparavant le Cleveland Advances Manufacturing Program, reconnaît la polarisation qui existe depuis longtemps entre, d'une part, les organisations gouvernementales et non gouvernementales du Canada et des États-Unis qui encouragent la réduction des produits chimiques toxiques, rémanents et bioaccumulables dans le bassin des Grands Lacs et, d'autre part, les entreprises et les industries des deux pays qui, bien entendu, résistent aux changements que cela comporte. Le CAMP et ses collaborateurs des régions, en qualité de tierces parties, et de sources neutres d'information et de technologie, estiment être en mesure de résoudre les différends et de faire la démonstration de technologies de substitution qui contribueront à protéger la santé des humains et des écosystèmes tout en favorisant la croissance économique dans l'ensemble du bassin des Grands Lacs.

Revised: 17 February 1997
Maintained by Kevin McGunagle, mcgunaglek@ijc.wincom.net

URL: www.ijc.org/rel/focus/v21i2/feat03.html