Preventing pollution: reusing, recycling and recovering on-site

Using your waste and waste by-products instead throwing them away (often at a cost).

Questions to ask yourself

Can you reuse any of your process water for cooling or cleaning?
Can you capture, clean and reuse your solvents?
Can you recover waste heat?
Can you recover reusable chemicals or metals from your waste streams?
Can you recycle and reuse offcuts or products that don’t meet quality specifications?

The following examples come from Canadian companies that have reported to the National Pollutant Release Inventory:

a fabricated metal manufacturing facility reused hydrochloric acid on-site in its wastewater treatment process to reduce the amount of hydrochloric acid sent for off-site disposal
a printing facility collected and distilled used cleaning solvents on-site for reuse
a paper manufacturer installed an additional heat exchanger to capture waste heat to reduce its steam/energy requirements
a primary metal manufacture recovers steel from its finishing operations and recycles it back into its steelmaking operations
a transportation equipment manufacturer implemented a coolant recovery system to allow them to reuse coolant