Design and Operation of Community Based Resource Recovery Services

University Of Rhode Island, Kingston RI

Investigators

Abstract

As a result of growing public concerns and increased legislation, more emphasis is being placed on the end-of-life-disposition of and resource recovery from manufactured products. This means that more pressures are being put on businesses and households to dispose of retired products in ways that are more beneficial to society and the environment. The recovery of selected materials from municipal solid waste is now commonplace, with most States operating material recovery facilities (MRFs). These facilities generally rely on householders for the initial separation of target materials (paper, cans, bottles and some plastic containers). The situation with respect to manufactured goods, particularly business and consumer electronic appliances, is much less well developed. A long established infrastructure for the processing of scrap automobiles is in existence, leading to the recovery of a high proportion of the materials in motor vehicles and to the remanufacturing of many components. However, the widespread development of a service infrastructure and facilities for the recovery of resources from other products is still in the relatively early stages of development. For the end-of-life processing of products, larger companies have established in-house resource recovery services. These services ensure proper disposal of all of the respective company's retired equipment, including items taken back from customers. These facilities may also contract to provide disposal services to other companies. Similarly, some larger scale facilities have been independently established that contract with organizations to accept and process end-of-life products. These companies provide contract service for larger enterprises that have not established in-house resource recovery facilities. While these larger facilities are having some impact on end-of-life disposition from larger companies, the effective recovery of products and materials from the millions of small businesses distributed throughout the country, that individually are of little interest to large scale processing centers needs to be addressed. Collectively these small businesses and enterprises represent an enormous source of materials and products for recycling. Effective processing of materials from this sector will have to be done in smaller community based service enterprises. These service enterprises should set up to deal with the wide variety of products and materials from smaller sources. A number of such service enterprises are in existence, but many more are needed. The processing of end of life products is necessarily labor intensive, and these services frequently employ persons with disabilities for some of the disassembly and sorting of materials. These types of organizations must be in a position to react quickly to changing inputs of products in a way that will keep collection, transportation and inventory costs low. This project will investigate fundamental problems to determine the most effective ways of operating community based resource recovery services through modeling of the collection logistics, optimum disassembly sequences and the design of facilities involving such activities. The investigation will be carried out in collaboration with community based resource recovery service, and metal recovery services providing guaranteed end-of-life product disposal services. This research will lead to the development of decision tools that will improve the economic viability of recycling and environmentally sustainable manufacturing.