Recovery mission

It seems like a Catch-22. A local waste company is a critical part of the sustainability of any community—big or small—and yet, few really think of us as pioneers when it comes to ecofriendly innovations.

Luckily, that view is changing as fast as an Oklahoma windstorm. Waste services companies are not only becoming known for their cleanliness and environmental practices, but they also are actually stretching the frontiers of sustainable technology.

The Mr. Murph Waste-to-Energy program at American Waste Control (AWC), the company of which I am vice president, offers a case in point.

By national standards, AWC is a small to midsized waste management company. Our headquarters are a little more than a stone’s throw from downtown Tulsa—the former oil capital of the world—but, AWC’s efforts for providing a new renewable source of energy are making history in the state.

For some time now, AWC’s goal has been to divert reusable resources from the waste stream through the Mr. Murph recycling program and then use the waste material that cannot be recycled to produce energy to power homes.

The results, so far, we think have been groundbreaking as AWC has built up our infrastructure and invested millions into new sustainable technology. AWC has recycled more than any other waste company in the city of Tulsa and has begun providing a new energy source that could help spur a movement of energy innovation statewide.
 

The making of Mr. Murph

AWC started recycling in 1987, back before any sort of high-tech machinery really caught on. We called our method kickin’ and pickin’, which meant we manually pulled cardboard out of the piles of trash delivered to our transfer station.

As the years went on, AWC wanted to make an even bigger impact, so by 2011, we began designing and building our own material recovery facility (MRF), what AWC refers to as Mr. Murph—the first licensed facility of its kind in Oklahoma.

The $10 million equipment upgrade converted the existing facility to fully automated processing of mixed recyclables, allowing for easier recycling and the collection of a wider variety of postconsumer materials, such as cardboard, paper, aluminum, steel, plastic and glass.

AWC spent approximately one year planning the design of and six months installing Mr. Murph, which included numerous site and design revisions. The prep time in planning paid off, as we were able to implement design features that added significant efficiencies. A good example is the redundant functions built into the MRF to increase uptime in case of technical delays or malfunctions.

Mr. Murph replaces an almost entirely manual process with dozens of screens, magnets, optical sorters, air classifiers and quality control inspection points to dramatically improve the separation and marketing of the recyclables AWC collects.

The facility accepts single-stream recyclables collected from businesses and approximately 130,000 single-family residences throughout Tulsa as part of a 10-year contract the company signed with the city in October 2012.

Mr. Murph is fed via a one-cart system from neighboring communities and commercial?customers, with bagged trash and?loose recyclables in the same container.

AWC has set out more than 100 commingled Mr. Murph recycling bins around the city in an effort to facilitate a broad-based approach to citywide recycling.

AWC now can divert a large percentage of recyclables from the waste stream, another environmental plus and a direct result of our investment in the MRF.

Since installing a fully automated system, recovery rates from single-stream loads delivered to the MRF are as high as 95 percent. Prior to automation, AWC’s recovery rates ranged from 20 to 30 percent.

Tulsa now has a 22 percent diversion rate, which represents a dramatic shift in its previous trash disposal efficiency.

With Mr. Murph, AWC can now process and reclaim almost 200 tons of recyclables per day. While a modest tonnage, especially compared with large national chains that are able to process many times that amount, for a company of AWC’s size and scope, it’s historic.

Finding a way to reduce a growing percentage of the city’s waste always has been AWC’s goal, and now it’s reality.
 

The lights come on

When AWC designed and built our MRF in 2011, it was clear to company officials that they were only in the initial stages of realizing even greater sustainability as a company and as a community. Without question, recycling was making a big impact, but we knew we needed a way to make use of the small percentage of material that could not be recycled.

With this in mind, AWC began implementing an innovative approach for using nonrecyclable residue at our landfill to produce renewable energy to power homes. The system, which was designed and installed by Pittsburgh-based Montauk Energy, relies on methane-rich landfill gas made by decomposing garbage at the landfill.

Landfill gas is about 50 percent methane, the primary component of natural gas. AWC pipes that methane into a processing and generation plant under a contract with Montauk Energy. The electricity then flows to the Oklahoma Municipal Power Authority, which supplies power to nearly 4,800 homes in Pawhuska, Oklahoma, and to 38 other small communities in the state.

If landfill methane is not captured, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, it has the potential to become 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide. Prior to 2012, AWC was flaring off the methane from the landfill, which is the usual method of dealing with the gas. The process produces carbon dioxide, a less potent greenhouse gas. Although flaring keeps methane from entering the atmosphere, where it can hurt the ozone, it also wastes a potential rich energy source.

By converting thousands of tons of trash per day into energy, AWC’s waste-to-energy project is helping to protect the region’s air and water quality from increased carbon emissions.

We also are adding decades of life to the roughly 220 acres of permitted landfill space that we own as AWC dramatically reduces waste material and boosts revenue to keep costs under control for customers.

All this adds up to a huge environmental plus for the Sooner State that could have significant ramifications.

Not only does AWC generate electricity, but the company also is offsetting fossil fuel consumption and reducing greenhouse gases to create an energy resource. The net result is improved lives as AWC uses a technology that is the first of its kind in the hub of Oklahoma’s oil country. As a local waste company, AWC couldn’t be prouder.

It’s not just ecofriendly; it’s also smart, and it’s paving a way to sustainability that could pay dividends for Oklahoma’s energy future.

Paul Ross is vice president of American Waste Control’s family of companies. More information on the company is available at www.americanwastecontrol.com. A version of this article first appeared in Renewable Energy from Waste, a sister publication of Recycling Today.