March/April 1996
There are two sides to every story, and both the proponents and opponents of aerosol can recycling are making their sides clear.
By Eileen Zagone
Eileen Zagone is editorial associate of Scrap.
Caution: Contents under pressure. Do not crush, puncture, or incinerate can. Do not store near heat or flame or at temperatures below freezing.
Check out the backs of your cans of shaving cream, cooking spray, ant killer, and other aerosol products and you’ll find just such a warning.
With that kind of admonition, it might seem unlikely that aerosol cans would be much of a target for recycling. After all, just about each condition the warning asks the public to avoid describes what could happen to a can at several points in its journey through the recycling stream.
The reality, however, is that more and more communities are encouraging the public to put their empty aerosol cans in blue bins and drop-off boxes to be recycled along with empty food cans. And with increased inclusion of aerosol cans in the household recycling mix, a growing number of recycling facilities—currently about 2,600 nationwide, scrap processing plants among them—are accepting aerosol cans, according to the Steel Recycling Institute (SRI) (Pittsburgh).
What, Me Worry?
While, in truth, aerosol cans represent a small portion of the flow of recyclables out there—estimates range between 3 and 7 percent of just the steel can mix in residential recycling programs that accept aerosols—their presence in the recycling stream has caused quite a ruckus in the scrap industry. And the contention shows no signs of abating either, with both opponents and proponents holding strong to their positions—and more and more aerosol cans turning up in the mix of recyclables across the country.
The basic issue is whether or not the cautionary statement printed on the backs of those cans applies to the recycling facilities that bale or shred them—in the process perhaps crushing, puncturing, and exposing the cans to high temperatures in direct violation of the warning label. And even if the caution is only meant for Joe Public, some recyclers question whether processing aerosol cans poses environmental and safety hazards.
At this point, opinion varies wildly, with some recyclers accepting and processing aerosol cans with no problems, and others reporting a number of considerable negatives. And for many of those recyclers that have had no experience handling aerosol cans, there is a specter of apprehension surrounding the discussion, with fears of explosions, fires, and potentially hazardous ooze contaminating their facilities. In fact, such worries, founded or not, have sounded an alarm through parts of the scrap recycling industry—an industry where liability and responsibility issues are not taken lightly.
To better understand both sides in this debate, a review of aerosol can basics is in order. Most aerosol cans—at least 90 percent—are made of steel, with plastic valves and dip tubes. The key to making these cans work—that is, dispensing the liquid inside as a fine mist or foam with the push of a button—is that aerosol cans contain not only the product but also a liquefied or compressed gas propellant. When the valve at the top of a can is pressed, propellant—typically butane, isobutane, propane, carbon dioxide, nitrogen, or nitrous oxide—expands because the air pressure inside the can is higher than outside the can, and this expansion drives the product from the container. As the product is used up, so too should the propellant, provided instructions are followed properly. (Some cans, for instance, should be shaken before or during dispensing and some must be held upright.)
Thus, when the product is gone, the can is considered empty and is theoretically ready to become part of the recycling stream, right alongside the empty cans that held Fido’s chow and last night’s green beans. Joe Public just needs to dispose of the can’s plastic cap (the plastic valve and dip tube can be left as is since these parts would melt at the high temperatures in steel mills), drop the aerosol can in his recycling bin, and put it out for curbside pickup, from whence it will journey to the processing facility to be baled or shredded in preparation for its return as new steel.
Sounds great, right? After all, more material translates to more tonnage and more money.
Yes, it does sound terrific, but the ever-increasing efforts to recycle aerosol cans have met with both positive and negative results in the real-life arena of scrap processing.
First, the Good News
One person who’s happy to point out the plus side of aerosol can recycling is Maribeth Rizzuto, SRI’s general manager of recycling, who says SRI has been “overwhelmed” by positive responses to the group’s promotions of community aerosol recycling programs. The public is happy to participate, and the cans have proven safe and easy to recycle, she reports. “To the best of my knowledge, there has been no documented evidence of an incident to date,” she says.
Roger Levine, vice president of Gershow Recycling (Medford, N.Y.), takes a comparable position. “Our experience has shown they are perfectly acceptable,” he says, pointing out that aerosol cans have been a part of Gershow’s can menu for several years (making up about 3 percent of the firm’s steel can mix), with no adverse effects.
Because aerosol cans are mixed in with other steel cans for processing and make up such a small portion of the total steel can throughput, the potential for any problems is minimal, explains Levine. Further, the company bales, rather than shreds its cans, and this process, he notes, has the dual effect of both minimizing inflammatory risk (because baling should offer gradual compression of the load) and ensuring that each can is punctured and no longer a sealed container—a requirement of incoming scrap at most mills. “By the time we get done baling it in our high-density baler, it is flattened and definitely no longer a sealed container,” he states.
Reporting similar success in recycling aerosol cans is Allan Goldstein, president of AMG Resources Corp. (Pittsburgh). “We accept them at all our locations, both loose and baled, and have had no problems in processing them,” he states, explaining that the firm shreds and detins aerosol cans along with other steel containers and scrap through a proprietary enclosed processing system designed to ensure worker and environmental safety.
Adding to the discussion, Rizzuto notes, “a lot of people have been processing aerosols all along. I think this is really a matter of the perception of a problem being more than what is really there.” Levine concurs, pointing out that efforts to promote the inclusion of aerosol cans has brought the issue to the fore, but that they have been a part of the household steel can mix for quite some time and pose no more processing quandaries than any other scrap material.
Half-Full or Half-Empty?
Other scrap processors have had decidedly different experiences in recycling aerosol cans. Among their most common complaint is that cans are arriving at processing facilities half-full—or half-empty. Either way, you don’t have to be a pessimist to comprehend the myriad concerns associated with the potentially hazardous and messy leftover product and propellant being released into your baler or shredder and onto the floor of your facility—referred to as the “ooze factor.”
Rizzuto, for her part, believes that such concerns are unwarranted. “We know through research conducted in Houston that these containers being offered for recycling are empty,” she maintains.
Tom Mele would beg to differ. Mele, president of Connecticut Metal Industries Inc. (Monroe, Conn.), was “oozed” last year by a rogue can of shaving cream, and, he reports, all too often aerosol containers arrive in his facility unemptied.
There could be a variety of reasons for this reported epidemic of unemptied cans, including the consumer no longer needing the product, as many a beard grower can attest, or valve breakage or propellant evaporation, both of which can leave the consumer unable to relieve the can of its contents.
All sides agree that such cans should not be included with recyclables and that the public needs to hear this message. Literature produced and distributed by SRI to households participating in aerosol can recycling programs, in fact, emphasizes repeatedly that only empty cans should go into curbside collection bins and that full or partially full containers should be given to someone who can use them, put in the trash, or collected through special designated collection programs. Yet, despite such educational efforts, a number of scrap recyclers emphasize that aerosol cans are arriving at their facilities in all manners of unemptied states.
Many, like Mele, fear that by venting these unemptied cans in their facilities they could open themselves up to environmental or safety liability issues. He explains his position this way: If a person spills an insecticide in his home, he is exempt from reporting it as a spilled hazardous waste, but if it happens in a processing facility, it may be considered a reportable spill.
Rizzuto’s response is that “fillers have omitted dangerous ingredients.” While this certainly may be true (though you’ve gotta wonder just what could be in that can of bug spray in the cabinet if it doesn’t contain at least some ingredients that are harmful), it represents a risk that some recyclers just don’t want to take.
Among the thoughts these scrap industry executives express is that perhaps one vented can of insecticide won’t cause soil and water contamination, but what about 100 cans—or even just 50—vented at a facility over time? And what about volatile organic compounds (VOCs)? While releasing the VOCs in one not-quite-empty aerosol can in an unpopulated area apparently poses a negligible threat to the environment, the amount of these heavily regulated pollutants (given off by, among other things, fuel sources—such as some propellants—and even some of the actual products commonly dispensed by aerosols) in, say, hundreds of unemptied cans could be of concern if released in a smoggy city.
As David Borsuk, manager of industrial marketing and quality control for Sadoff Iron & Metal Co. (Fond du Lac, Wis.), puts it, “Until we can be assured of not having any environmental or safety problems, the most prudent course of action is for us not to accept aerosol cans. Because we are ultimately responsible for the potential problems, we can’t take the risk.”
To be fair, however, Sadoff’s policy is to accept aerosol cans for recycling only if they are presented in an “environmentally friendly” way—punctured and drained, says Borsuk. Because of that policy, he explains, the company is able to accept vented cans from industrial accounts, such as can fillers and manufacturers, but because there is as yet no practical or cost-effective means of venting cans picked up from curbside programs, Sadoff stays clear of such “postconsumer” aerosol cans.
An Explosive Controversy
Even limiting your aerosol diet to vented cans may not be the panacea it seems, according to Alan Perlman, president of PerlCo L.L.C. (Memphis). A few years ago at Southern Tin Compress Corp., a subsidiary of one of PerlCo’s joint venture partners, a commercial load of aerosol cans that were supposed to have been punctured and drained was being baled at the firm’s facility when a spark from a nearby torch ignited a buildup of accumulated vaporized alcohol in the baler, he recalls. The result was a deadly explosion that lifted the roof off the facility, left two employees injured, and one person dead.
Admittedly, there were several factors related to the Southern Tin explosion that might be avoidable at other scrap recycling facilities. First of all, many industry participants do not recommend that aerosol cans be baled exclusively, but rather along with other steel cans. Second, all caution that there be no spark source nearby, such as a torch or even a lit cigarette. In the less-than-perfect world of your average scrap plant, however, notes Mele, even with precautions, there will be pitfalls, and danger always exists. “It is not ideal, but it does happen,” he says. “The risk can’t always be isolated.”
Perlman takes a similar tack and believes his was a one-in-a-million incident. But still, he reports, “I know the possibility is there. I’ll never let anything like this happen again.” And for now, that means no aerosol cans are accepted at PerlCo, whether they are “empty” or not.
Proler International Corp. (Houston) also experienced an explosion that was directly attributable to aerosol cans, reports Dennis Caputo, the firm’s vice president of environmental and safety compliance. It was in the late 1980s, and Proler was processing a load of unvented aerosol cans from an industrial source in one of its large shredders (the same size used to shred automobiles) when disaster hit. It was an explosion with a force so powerful that it produced a large fireball and blew a 15-foot-by-15-foot-by-1-inch-thick sheet of steel off the shredder and hundreds of feet into the air, as well as causing significant damage to the shredder’s air pollution control system.
Although no one was injured as a result of the explosion, Proler has since altered its policy with regard to processing aerosol cans: The company will only accept them if they are completely empty and punctured.
Apparently Browning-Ferris Industries Inc. (BFI) (Houston) has—or at least had—determined that aerosol can recycling poses too much of an explosion risk as well. Following a BFI-commissioned study conducted last year that found that baling aerosol cans could result in the “ignition of released flammable propellant gases ... and subsequent burning of accumulated residues within the equipment,” the company’s MRFs reportedly stopped accepting aerosols. While Rizzuto states that SRI is “currently working with BFI on a solution,” BFI officials failed to return repeated requests for information on the status of its aerosol can recycling policy.
And, to add fuel to this fire, at press time, the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) revealed that it was currently inclined to recommend that aerosol cans not be accepted at MRFs unless costly venting equipment is used to ensure the cans are empty. While officials on the committee considering the issue say this decision is pending and subject to change, they also suggest that data to date indicates enough potential hazards to workers and equipment that the ANSI committee may very well conclude that aerosol cans should be excluded from MRFs. ANSI may not reach a judgment until the end of this year at the earliest, however.
Opening a Can of Controversy
When asked what processors should do when faced with continual problems of unemptied cans, advocates of aerosol recycling recommend talking to suppliers and developing additional public education materials with their community recycling coordinators.
But this answer is unsatisfactory as far as one industry member is concerned: “As an individual scrap processor, it is difficult, if not impossible, to counter the push for aerosol can recycling. I don’t have the time, the money, or the public relations ability to fight this. How can I possibly say to my municipal customers that these pose a recycling problem when everything they’ve received from SRI has said they are safe to collect and recycle?”
Borsuk recommends a more active approach on the part of scrap recyclers, whose concerns, he feels, are “regarded as a relative nonissue” by proponents of aerosol can recycling. He and others advise processors to talk to their state legislators and regulators to make sure their concerns are understood.
Barring that, both proponents and opponents say the recycler has the ultimate power to refuse a contract that includes aerosol cans. “If someone is nervous about accepting them, then he shouldn’t take them. We all have that right as business people,” says Levine, who compares the aerosol can debate to the lead-acid battery debate of years ago. Some processors opted to cease handling batteries to avoid any potential environmental liability, he points out, while others felt they could continue to safely recycle them.
If attitudes about processing aerosol cans go the way of decisions about handling lead-acid batteries, the industry will eventually reach a market-based balance on the question of whether or not to process the cans. But for now, a solution to this contentious issue is far from being achieved, and debate is likely to increase all the more as more and more aerosol cans find their way into scrap processing facilities.
Perhaps, then, a warning is in order.
Caution: Discussion contains volatile elements and can become heated and even explosive when agitated. •
There are two sides to every story, and both the proponents and opponents of aerosol can recycling are making their sides clear.