MARCH/APRIL 2007
Whether it’s a standard push broom or a sophisticated street sweeper, the right equipment can make it easier—and more likely—for workers to keep the scrapyard spic and span. But just as important, scrap professionals say, is the right attitude.
BY KIM FERNANDEZ
Joel Litman spends a lot of time thinking about his neighbors.
His company, Texas Recycling/Surplus Inc. (Dallas), is in what he describes as a “little bit better-
developed industrial area than a traditional scrapyard might be,” with close proximity to other businesses, some of which have customers coming to their doors. And as primarily a paper recycling facility, errant scraps of paper or unsecured loads can blow around, even on a day without much wind.
Litman and his crew take particular pains to make sure that doesn’t happen, though. “We want to be good neighbors,” he says. “We don’t want our paper blowing half a block away, and we don’t want complaints that we’re littering because of that.”
Maintaining a positive community image is a terrific reason to keep things neat and clean around the scrap facility, to be sure. But even facilities that don’t have neighbors or easily scattered materials should concern themselves with housekeeping. Stray pieces of metal, plastic, and other materials present hazards to both equipment and people in and around the plant. Chemical spills can be an immediate danger to employees and a tremendous headache in stormwater management. And even dust and dirt can be a health or safety hazard because of what it contains or where it is, such as on a smooth concrete or tile floor.
Catalogs and Web sites offer myriad housekeeping tools, everything from $15 brooms to street sweepers that cost well more than $100,000. It would be easy to fill up an entire warehouse with things designed just to keep it clean. Luckily, whether your firm’s approach involves whiz-bang machinery or old-fashioned elbow grease, most scrap professionals say a little preparation goes a long way when it comes to keeping things clean.
The Basics
Several pieces of cleaning equipment are standard operating requirements at just about any scrap facility: a broom, dustpan, mop, bucket, and the right attitude.
At South Post Oak Recycling Center (Houston), good housekeeping is part of the company’s mantra, right alongside good customer service. There’s a reason for that, says owner Freddie Robinson. “If you don’t have pieces of metal lying around, you don’t have them getting caught up in your hydraulic lines or tearing up tires.”
Because the facility only handles nonferrous metals, “we’re not buying materials that a magnet would pick up,” Robinson says. “If we dealt in iron or something, we’d probably have to have a machine with a [magnetic] roller brush on it.”
Instead, the company relies heavily on brooms and manual labor to keep clean. Robinson expects every employee to pick up after himself or herself—and even to pick up after those who miss their own messes.
“It’s everyone’s job,” he says. “It doesn’t matter who left the materials on the ground. If you walk past and you see [a mess], it should be attended to immediately. It’s part of safety, and safety is everyone’s responsibility.”
It takes a bit of effort to get total cooperation, Robinson says, but people who plan to stay employed at the plant soon come to realize they’ll be spending any downtime with a broom in hand, cleaning up. “When we’re not doing something else, we’re keeping the floor clean. It’s really that simple.”
Texas Recycling/Surplus takes a similar approach, Litman says, though the company does have one full-time staffer dedicated to keeping the inside plant floors clear during the day.
“We’re in production all day long,” he says. “You’re always going to need to clean up. Why wait until the end of the shift? When the second shift starts and [it faces] the mess from the first shift, it hampers production. We’re big believers in the quality of our product, and a lot of that begins in our housekeeping.”
The Big Stuff
A large facility might want to go beyond brooms into specialized cleaning equipment. About a year ago, Carolinas Recycling Group LLC (Spartanburg, S.C.) invested in a $120,000 street sweeper to clear roadways and hard outdoor surfaces. The company runs the machine up to four times a day to keep the ground clear of debris and potentially hazardous materials.
The sweeper purchase coincided with the company’s new commitment to overall housekeeping, which is intended to avoid accidents and improve productivity and its corporate image, says Ken Siegel, vice president of operations.
“The sweeper keeps us from tracking dirt out onto public roads,” he says. “The cost was significant, but it’s worth it in terms of the goodwill that it creates with the local regulatory people and our neighbors.”
A dedicated street sweeper isn’t the only option for such cleaning, however. Several manufacturers make sweeper attachments for front-end loaders, skid-steers, and similar machines. Theseattachments come in a variety of widths to clean different areas. Some are equipped with sprinkler kits to keep dust down. Depending upon their design, their hopper brooms might sweep in one or two directions. Most collect debris inside a metal container, which the machine can lift and dump into an appropriate receptacle. Skid-steer-mounted sweepers might be small enough to operate inside large buildings.
For ferrous recyclers, magnets can help control stray pieces of iron and steel. Hand-held magnetic sweepers, which start at less than $100, operate like push brooms. Hanging magnetic sweepers, which can be had for several hundred dollars, attach to existing equipment, even trucks, allowing operators to collect (and recycle) ferrous materials on the floor or ground.
In enclosed areas of the property, Carolinas Recycling uses mechanized brooms that collect everything as they sweep, preventing debris and dust from just being scattered. These brooms use dust control systems that spray a mist of water over the sweeping area to ensure complete cleanup and minimize the chance of hazards becoming airborne.
Siegel says his crew stops working about 30 minutes before the end of each shift to run the pickup brooms and use hand brooms to clean up the floor. “Everybody picks up a broom, and we sweep the entire floor,” he says. “This, first, collects the metal so we’re not losing it, and, second, makes the environment safer throughout the day.”
He prefers the old-fashioned, hand-held tools inside the plant, he says. “If we use a piece of power equipment, we end up with a pile of metal and dirt. With a push broom, we can control that a little bit better.”
The right tool for the task
Outside the Texas Recycling/Surplus facility, employees work on a gravel surface that’s not friendly to brooms or sweepers, thus they collect stray papers by hand. Litman says that doing so also helps his crew stay on top of things. “We see oil spills and use absorbent to clean those up,” he says. “Then it goes into a barrel in accordance with stormwater rules.”
Several vendors sell specialized pads for soaking up a wide range of liquids, from water to oils to acids. The pads are made of multiple layers of absorbent materials and come in various sizes for different-sized spills. Some even tear off like paper towels. For the most part, the pads cost less than a dollar each in large quantities, and they can be used on either one-time spills or to sop up equipment leaks until a machine can be repaired.
Many manufacturers also make loose absorbent granules. Clay is a traditional spill-control medium, but newer materials claim greater absorbency. One product made of recycled cellulose pulls in at least three times the liquid as the same weight of clay, its manufacturer states. Because users must dispose of such absorbents properly, some sellers now offer absorbent recycling services that take the used materials and convert them into energy.
Liquids that are not absorbed typically end up in stormwater drains, which require special filters to ensure waterborne hazards don’t affect the environment. Simple drum filters start at about $200. When workers pour contaminated water through a series of filters in the drum, the filters capture chemicals and pollutants, and clean water emerges at the bottom. Replacement filters cost about $40 each.
Working Cean
Plant housekeeping is aided by the right equipment, but also by the right work practices. Litman’s crew is careful to secure bales of paper and quickly pick up any paper that does separate from its bale.
At South Post Oak Recycling, Robinson says his employees segregate loads by material and size as they come in and contain them as appropriate: Materials are unloaded on the ground, baled, or put in bins or drums that are stored with like materials inside. “We try to keep it organized,” he says. “We don’t like to have a drum here and a drum there. It makes the place look tidier and promotes a cleaner environment.”
Siegel also subscribes to the organize-as-you-go theory. “A scrapyard doesn’t have to be an eyesore,” he says. “We try to pay attention to overall neatness, and where we have large stockpiles of scrap, we try and keep them shaped as neatly as possible.” Such activity “helps us keep up with inventory and makes the facility clean-looking,” he explains. “And it all results in a safer workplace for our employees and a safer place for our customers.”
The company’s new commitment to housekeeping has paid off, Siegel says, and both he and his staff notice. “When we first started all of this about a year ago, it probably seemed like a burden,” he says. “In the end, though, everyone views it as a benefit.… They’re not driving over scrap with forklifts, and they’re not worrying about tripping over it all themselves.”
Kim Fernandez is a writer based in Bethesda, Md.
Whether it’s a standard push broom or a sophisticated street sweeper, the right equipment can make it easier—and more likely—for workers to keep the scrapyard spic and span. But just as important, scrap professionals say, is the right attitude.