Hot to swap.

Byline: Sherri Buri McDonald The Register-Guard

SPRINGFIELD - Area grass seed farmers enrich the soil in their fields with 5,200 tons a year of a byproduct from Weyerhaeuser Co.'s containerboard mill. That's enough to cover a football field 15 feet deep.

The brown pulpy residue, which is tested annually and must meet strict standards for metals and other toxic substances, is about half wood fiber and half lime and grit.

"We use that product to up pH," said Galen Kropf, who grows ryegrass and fescue on 1,500 acres in the Harrisburg area and has been putting the byproduct on his land for the past decade. "The soil over time gets acid, so you sweeten the soil up."

This is just one local example of a "materials exchange," with one business selling or giving a byproduct or scrap material to another business in a mutually beneficial arrangement. These types of exchanges occur in scores of industries from agriculture to high-tech.

In Weyerhaeuser's case, the company pays one-half to one-third of what it did to dispose of the residue in the landfill.

And farmers can save thousands of dollars when they use Weyerhaeuser's material instead of a more expensive agricultural liming agent that needs to be applied more frequently, said Josh Horner, owner of Horner Enterprises Inc., which distributes byproducts from Weyerhaeuser and other local paper mills to area grass seed growers.

Companies have long had a financial motive to seek out these arrangements. But the recent emphasis on environmentally friendly business practices provides additional motivation.

"The healthiest form of our society or economy is an economy where the waste of one business becomes the feedstock of another business," said Sarah Grimm, waste reduction specialist for Lane County public works waste management division.

Today, with the Internet, businesspeople have more tools than ever to help them swap materials.

The Industrial Materials Exchange, based in Seattle, has been linking businesses seeking to sell and buy byproducts and scrap for 16 years.

Five years ago, a coalition of public and private organizations, including the state Department of Environmental Quality and Association of Oregon Recyclers, launched nwmaterialsmart.org. The Web portal links to 13 materials exchanges, including IMEX and BRING Recycling Materials Exchange, a community exchange for artists, inventors and entrepreneurs in the Eugene area.

Many states have their own statewide materials exchanges. But with giant IMEX just up Interstate 5, Oregon opted instead to create a clearinghouse of exchanges, said David Allaway, waste prevention specialist with the Department of Environmental Quality.

"The flow of trade does not stop at a state's border, so it was believed that if Oregon created its own exchange, not only does it double the work, but you have the potential of fracturing the network and reducing the number of exchanges," he said.

Allaway said he hopes that one day someone will discover a cost-effective way to link all the exchanges serving a region.

He thinks the future continues to look promising for materials exchanges. "As long as people in business are buying stuff and having stuff they no longer need, there's going to be an opportunity to exchange materials," he said.

Longer life

Hynix's computer-chip plant in west Eugene is always on the lookout for ways to reuse or recycle materials, said Alan Olander, who leads the company's three-person environmental team.

For about eight years, Hynix has sold isopropyl alcohol that it uses to clean wafers to local paint producer Forrest Paint Co., which buys about 2,000 gallons every other month.

The isopropyl alcohol doesn't go into any paint products, said founder and president Scott Forrest. It's the fuel in Forrest Paint's FireSnake product. Railroads in the United States and Canada burn the 10-foot long FireSnakes next to rails that have contracted in cold weather and need to be heated in order to make repairs.

Forrest, a chemical engineer by training, said he contacted Hynix asking to buy its used isopropyl alcohol after he read the company's Toxic Right to Know filing, required by the city of Eugene, and learned Hynix paid to dispose of the material.

Including the cost of shipping, Forrest Paint pays about $1 a gallon for the waste isopropyl alcohol. Normally it would cost $3.50 a gallon.

Forrest said he's a fan of doing business this way. He has sold and purchased materials using Internet-based exchanges.

Last year, Hynix began supplying Reco Labs, based in Brush Prairie, Wash., with used quartz windows, which Reco Labs makes into telescope lenses and sells on eBay to amateur astronomers. "This is an example of things we're trying to do more of," local Hynix spokesman Bobby Lee said.

The windows are used as lids for the chambers used in the process of etching, or carving out patterns on the semiconductors.

Not all of the windows are in good enough shape to be reused as lenses, Olander said. But so far this year, Reco Labs has picked up about 60 of them.

"The more we look out there, the more we'll see creative ways to use our byproducts that help the economy and reduce the landfill," Lee said.

Assisting artists

Eugene artist and toolmaker Chris Mini is turning stainless steel remnants into tools that he and others can use to cast glass.

The set of rings and angles that Mini makes by hand enables artists to more easily and consistently use shape in their fused glass projects.

They also provide a sturdy border that can withstand the kiln's 1,500 degree Fahrenheit temperature. So artists can fill the ring with pieces of scrap glass.

Up to this point, kiln workers have traditionally had to use expensive sheet glass. (A single 20-inch by 34-inch piece can cost nearly $90.)

The new tools "will probably spur a secondary market in scrap glass," said Mary Hornig, a glass artist who is married to Mini.

So far, Mini has sold the casting tools to other artists through word of mouth. Based on their reaction, he figures he's onto something.

"Their eyes lit up when I showed them this," he said.

Mini plans to market the casting tools through his company, Artifex Toolworks, on the Web. He said he hasn't yet determined what price he'll charge. The price of stainless, along with other metal commodities, has skyrocketed in recent years.

It was Mini's quest to keep costs low that led him to the arrangement he struck about five months ago with a local sheet metal supplier that does a lot of work with stainless. The shop charges Mini the scrap price for its remnants plus the cost of labor to shear them into one-inch strips.

"I went through a lot of gyrations finding someone who could sell me the material sheared into strips," he said.

Mini is able to get the stainless at a cheaper price than if he bought sheet metal and paid to have it sheared. That enables him to make his products available to artists at a reasonable price, he said.

"By doing this thing that helps its bottom line, (the stainless supplier) is helping all our bottom lines and allowing artists to do things they couldn't do before," Mini said.

MATERIALS EXCHANGES

Businesses can save money and the environment by passing on byproducts and scrap material to other businesses.

For more information: Go to nwmaterialsmart.org, a Web portal

of 13 regional materials exchanges.