Seeking control: franchise rights to control generated material are shaping up as a recycling battleground

Recycling Today, May, 2003 by Dan Sandoval

Townsend noted that one Florida legislator introduced Senate Bill 1462 last year, which would have defined recovered C&D materials as a separate product category exempt from solid waste franchising regulations. But he remarked that efforts to pass the bill have stalled and it does not seem likely to move forward any time soon.

Rigid franchising agreements have been seen in other parts of the country as well, including California and Washington State.

Other issues facing C&D recyclers include coping with the presence of lead-based paint (LBP) and lumber treated with chromium copper arsenate (CCA) in the recycling stream. Regulators and health officials are carefully monitoring the handling of lead in any form, including as paint in the C&D concrete and wood stream. Concerns about toxic levels of arsenic found in CCA-treated wood are more recent.

Concrete recyclers are maintaining that LBP within the concrete stream is found in such small amounts as to be negligible in any given load of crushed concrete. "It would be very difficult for concrete to be considered a hazard because of a coat of lead-based paint," said Townsend.

Recyclers of scrap wood, however, will have to remain vigilant in how they handle older painted wood as well as decking, stairs and other pieces of lumber that were treated with CCA. He noted that wood fuel users have their emissions monitored for lead and arsenic, so material will have to meet set standards of non-contamination. There are also concerns in the mulch market that CCA-treated wood be kept out of that stream, since mulch is handled by bare hands and used as playground cover.

The NADC Annual Convention took place at the Renaissance Orlando resort March 30 to April 2.

The author is senior editor and Internet editor of Recycling Today. He can be contacted at dsandoval@RecyclingToday.com.