Foundries share successful models for beneficial reuse.

By surveying foundrymen who have implemented successful strategies and models for the reuse of byproducts, FIRST hopes to spark other successful efforts throughout the industry.

Each year, 6-10 million cubic yards of foundry byproducts are placed in landfills. Even though the U.S. is working hard to reduce the overall amount of waste that is landfilled, available landfill space is a scarce and increasingly expensive resource. By exploring beneficial reuse opportunities, industry potentially can save $100-250 million in disposal costs - reuse is not just a good-neighbor issue, it's a bottom line issue.

Foundries have historically pursued beneficial reuse options individually, since market applications for foundry residuals tend to be localized due to transportation costs. In addition, each state has a different set of regulations governing reuse and recycling of foundry byproducts. As a result, no handbook exists that foundries can use to plan and execute a sustainable beneficial reuse program.

In late 1997, a consortium of state foundry associations, AFS and industry suppliers established the "Foundry Industry Recycling Starts Today" (FIRST) Project because they realized that individual foundries and states were encountering the same market entry barriers. Through technical work groups and technology transfer partnerships, FIRST is attacking these market entry barriers and building a tool kit of technical, environmental and economic data to support beneficial reuse of foundry industry byproducts.

FIRST has seven goals, all focused on creating a national umbrella to support local and state beneficial reuse efforts. One goal is to "Develop Business Strategies and Models" that support sustainable beneficial reuse activities. Through a recent survey of industry managers with ongoing beneficial reuse programs, a number of common business strategies and models emerged.

SUCCESSFUL STRATEGIES

The key to building a successful beneficial reuse program is delivering usable material to an accessible market. All sustained beneficial reuse programs - in contrast to onetime-only projects - share a number of common attributes:

Management Commitment - Without a commitment from management, it often is difficult for the environmental manager or maintenance supervisor to receive the support needed to make changes in the way byproducts are handled inside and outside the foundry.

Spend Money to Save Money - Foundries must be prepared to make investments to produce quality products for recycling, just as they make investments to improve their casting quality. There are many environmental benefits to recycling of non-hazardous residual streams, as well as a significant good neighbor component, but at its core, recycling will save money for most foundry operators only after they invest in establishing markets for their byproducts.

Avoid Contamination - Markets require quality-controlled, consistent raw materials, not somebody else's garbage. Contamination from core butts, tramp metal and general refuse is the most vocal complaint of byproduct end-users. From the shop floor level up, foundries must invest in equipment and training that will keep materials separate from each other and uncontaminated by general refuse.

Understand the Market - The "if you have it, they will use it" school of materials management does not apply here. In the same sense that foundries spend time and energy understanding the needs of their metalcasting customers, they must understand the specifications and material handling requirements of recycling markets.

Do Your Homework - Because foundries use different processes and binder systems, the characteristics of each individual waste stream must be understood. In most states, environmental testing is required for foundries to participate in beneficial reuse programs. End-users, however, are less concerned about the chemical characteristics and more concerned about the physical characteristics. Foundries must document the physical and performance characteristics important to each end market.

Pick the Low Hanging Fruit - Many iron and steel foundries gain experience with recycling by starting with slag, in part because many highway engineers and contractors are familiar with steelmaking slag. In most states, it also makes sense to start with manufactured products markets, where it often is easier to get materials permitted for reuse.

Assess the Market Size - Understanding the volume requirements of local markets is critical to recycling success. Manufactured products such as flowable fill, asphalt, portland cement, concrete masonry and bricks all require consistency in their feedstock. Typically, these markets will replace a percentage of their conventional fine aggregates with processed foundry sands. Once manufacturers start a production run, they want an assured supply of raw material.

Know Your Competitive Strengths and Weaknesses - Properly processed foundry sands are uniform in grain size distribution, but usually much finer than conventional construction sands. These two characteristics are an advantage for some applications and a disadvantage for others. It is important that foundries understand how to target their materials appropriately. Foundries also must understand the cost and availability of conventional construction sands, gravel and crushed stone in their region.

Think Strategically - Cooperative processing and marketing is emerging as a way for smaller foundries to pursue the many benefits of byproduct recycling. Many foundries are clustered within reasonable proximity of each other, and could cooperate to meet market requirements. High-volume projects such as highway embankments and large structural fills require stockpiling material, sometimes for years at a time. Many foundries do not have space to stockpile materials, and hauling the material to a storage site and then to a job site usually destroys the economic advantage of using the material in the first place.

Educate Your Customers - In addition to individual calls on prospective users, foundries should produce technical reports, brochures, fact sheets and videos describing their recyclable materials. They, or their marketing partners, should host meetings of prospective users, seek opportunities to make presentations to user industry groups and meet with their state and local officials. In short, foundries should create marketing programs for their materials, just as they would to market their castings.

BUSINESS MODELS

The survey focused on ongoing, successful beneficial reuse programs rather than individual one-time projects, and three basic models have been identified. Beneficial reuse programs fall logically into three types: stand-alone programs managed by the foundry; partnerships that add value to the program; and cooperative processing. Following are examples of these different approaches.

'Do It Yourself' Model

The "Do It Yourself" model is found most often in larger foundries with higher volume outputs, dedicated environmental staffs, and resources for testing and pilot projects. Many of the foundrymen surveyed emphasize that the most important investment they made is dedicated staff time and management commitment to pursue reuse options.

Typical is the experience of Wheland Foundry's gray and ductile iron plants in Chattanooga, Tennessee. The foundry produces nearly 200,000 tons of usable sand annually, as well as approximately 35,000 tons of cupola slag, which is being recycled. Environmental Manager Larry Bowers describes the success of his program in the following way: "We now reuse over 95% of our solid byproducts with an annual savings of more than $5 million."

Green sand and coldbox cores from the foundry's current production lines are processed through a reclaimer that reduces material to grain size. This material is being sold to a mulch manufacturer, who Bowers met at a state solid waste conference. Wheland is now shipping five semi-trailer loads a day to the mulch manufacturer's plants, where the black sand color is considered an advantage.

Sand also is being sold from Wheland's on-site landfill, where a contractor loads out the material at $1/ton for local contractors. This material may have some core butts included, but the cores typically are crashed in the grading process at a job site. Bowers spent considerable time introducing Wheland's material to contractors, in part through a luncheon arranged through his AFS chapter. According to Bowers, contractors particularly like this material for projects requiring good compaction strengths, such as under slabs for garages and warehouses. Sand also is used in a nearby mine reclamation project.

'Partner' Model

The most common business model uncovered in the survey is "Partnering." Foundries with successful beneficial reuse programs partner with existing recycling businesses, asphalt producers, cement kilns, ready mix concrete producers, masonry and brick producers, and material brokers. Foundries with processing and marketing partners cite many advantages of this approach, including expertise, knowledge of processing requirements and specifications, access to decision-makers, and focused effort.

One of the most visible examples of partnering with an existing recycling businesses is the Ford foundry and Kurtz Bros., Inc., in Cleveland. Kurtz Bros. is a soils company with experience in manufacturing specialty and recycled soil amendments, composts and mulches. In the mid-1980s, Kurtz began processing spent sands from the Ford foundry. That business relationship continues today, with Kurtz having developed a large and varied portfolio of geotechnical projects, flowable fill projects, and other specialty products, such as concrete barriers for the Cleveland Grand Prix constructed with Ford foundry sand.

A good option for many foundries is to partner directly with a local asphalt or ready mix producer. This option allows the foundry to prepare products specifically for that end user's requirements. In many cases, the asphalt or ready mix producer actually processes materials, as they have aggregate handling equipment on site. GM-Powertrain, Defiance, Ohio, partners with Gerken Materials, a Napoleon, Ohio, asphalt contractor, to move its 1000 tons of quenched slag each month. Gerken uses the processed slag as a fine aggregate in its hot mix asphalt, where the material meets Ohio Dept. of Transportation specifications as "granulated slag-sand."

Kingsport Foundry in Kingsport, Tennessee, sends its 3000 tons of spent sand to a nearby asphalt plant through a material broker. This arrangement has cut the foundry's disposal costs by 80%. When used at a 10-15% ratio in hot mix asphalt, the processed sand meets Tennessee Dept. of Transportation specifications for fine aggregate in asphalt pavements. The broker is an asphalt contractor who is working with a number of foundries in the south central U.S.

Many foundrymen are familiar with the partnership formed among Buffalo's Pohlman Foundry, Rieffler Concrete and TDJ Group to create Refill Corp. (see "Pohlman Foundry's Spent Sand Finds a Home in Flowable Fill," modern casting, August 1997, p. 4851). Pohlman's initial incentive was to remove an 8000-ton pile of foundry sand on its property. The partnership has developed the Buffalo area flowable fill market such that more than 50,000 cubic yards of flowable fill are sold annually. According to Bill Haas, Rieffler's Vice President of Sales, foundry sand adds value to its flowable fill business through improved performance and lower costs. Rieffler is sourcing material from other foundries in neighboring states and Canada in order to meet market demand. In addition, Rieffler manufactures concrete masonry products containing foundry sand.

In 1984, Wheland Foundry entered into a long-term agreement with giant aggregate producer Vulcan Materials. Vulcan operates an on-site crusher to process Wheland's gray iron cupola slag. In the past, the slag was sold by Vulcan for aggregate in road base and asphalt production. Recently, an agreement was negotiated between Vulcan and the Southdown Corp., one of the nation's largest cement producers. Wheland's crushed slag is now hauled to Southdown's cement plant in Knoxville.

Foundries in Alabama, Indiana, Iowa, Louisiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, New Hampshire, Tennessee and Texas are shipping material to cement plants. Cement kilns employ material brokers who seek fine materials with high silica and alumina contents, an excellent fit with most foundry sands. According to Bill Jones, Director of Sales for Perma-Fix Kiln Services in St. Louis, chemistry and transportation are key factors in determining whether a cement plant is a viable market for foundry sands. Jones points out that the biggest barrier he has encountered is that foundries have not made investments to treat their sand streams as a product rather than a waste; material for this market must be processed to crush cores and screen out tramp metal and general refuse.

The "Partner" model is often more cost-effective for the foundry than making capital investments in screening plants and crushers on its own. Foundry managers also cite other advantages to this approach. Partners can provide marketplace access and expertise that foundries lack. Good partners understand technical specifications, material handling requirements, transportation logistics and often have internal testing labs. In a typical partnership, the foundry segregates its various byproduct streams internally, but pays its partner a fee to process its byproducts for reuse. In a number of cases, the foundry simply gives material to its partner free of charge.

'Cooperate' Model

Perhaps the least understood but most promising business model is cooperative handling and processing. Today, only a handful of companies provide this service for the foundry industry, however, cooperative processing is key to establishing recycling markets for smaller foundries. Centralized processing and marketing reduces the per ton cost of recycling, produces consistent products and provides incentives for marketing the processed materials.

Three processing companies are currently chartered as foundry-owned cooperatives - two of them, Allegheny Recovery Corp. (ARC), near Pittsburgh, and Process Recovery Corp. (PRC), near Reading, are set up under the auspices of the Pennsylvania Foundrymen's Assn. Both of these companies are stock corporations whose shares were purchased by member foundries. These companies and a Michigan counterpart, Resource Recovery Corp. of West Michigan (RRC), Coopersville, Michigan, are unusual because they provide complete management of foundry residuals. All three companies control landfill disposal capacity for non-recyclable residuals; centrally process byproduct streams commingled from multiple foundries; produce a consistent, market-ready product; and produce significant cost savings to their participating foundries.

Managers of these foundry-owned cooperatives point to several other benefits. In their view, cooperatives controlled by foundries have a vested interest in tight environmental controls. Because these three cooperatives each control landfill capacity, additional cost savings are realized - competing landfills have been forced to lower their tipping fees for foundry residuals. In Michigan's case, the drop was significant: from $24-$30/ton (before RRC's operation) to $8-10/ton (today). And the corporate managers believe that cooperative processing will ultimately allow more than 90% of total foundry wastes to be recycled, by developing markets for dusts, sludges, refractories and pallets.

Cooperative processing also can be provided by a credible third party who is not controlled by foundries. For example, Kurtz Bros. now handles about 400,000 tons of spent foundry sand annually, about two-thirds from the Ford plant and about one-third from other medium and small foundries. The company has built relationships with contractors, ready mix producers, masonry producers and a variety of other end users over the years through marketing Ford's foundry sand. it has gained the trust of the Ohio EPA and local officials.

Another approach to cooperative processing and marketing is under development in Wisconsin: cooperative processing by an aggregate supplier. For more than 2 years, FIRST and a group of Wisconsin foundries have been supporting a research project in the Asphalt Research and Testing Program at the Univ. of Wisconsin-Madison. As a result of that project, the two largest integrated asphalt producers in the state are exploring the use of commingled foundry sands in asphalt and roadbase applications. These producers, who are also the largest suppliers of aggregates in the state, are currently engaged in demonstration projects with Grede Foundry-Reedsburg and a consortium of other foundries (Briggs & Stratton Corp., Falk Corp., Kohler Co. and Waupaca Foundry).

The Wisconsin Cast Metals Assn. recently received a planning grant from the state's recycling market development program to survey more than 35 Milwaukee-area foundries to determine quantities of various byproduct streams. That project, also supported by FIRST, will explore the pros and cons of different business models.

A cooperative model that has yet to be tested is for a larger foundry with processing equipment to provide that service for a fee to smaller foundries. In theory, that model should work as well as any other third party service. Wheland's Bowers notes that it is likely that other Chattanooga foundries will be able to crush their slag through the company's on-site crusher once his own company's backlog has been processed and sold.

FIRST plans to publish case histories of successful foundry beneficial reuse programs on its website, www.foundryrecycling.org, and foundries with success stories are encouraged to contact FIRST to share their experiences and techniques for market development.