Making the right connections

COOPERATIVE ventures are increasing at a rapid rate for many good reasons. They reflect the tremendous need to reduce costs without reducing revenues, the improved efficiencies of providing customers with more varied, higher quality product lines, and greater flexibility to achieve recycling goals. And most important to the surge in cooperative ventures is simply that today there are more potential "cooperators" in the public and private sector who are ready and able to participate.

Two regional solid waste authorities in Iowa - Great River in Fort Madison and Bluestem in Cedar Rapids, illustrate the process and benefits. As a result of a contractual arrangement, materials which are diverted, processed and bagged at their respective landfills -- including wood mulch, yard trimmings compost, biosolids/papermill sludge compost - are reaching the retail market. "We now can offer retailers a `full service' line of mulch, topsoil and humus products. We save money on purchasing bags and share costs of a full-time marketing person," says Randy Hartman, director of Great River. (Hartman and Dave Hogan of Bluestem will describe the arrangement at the BioCycle Midwest Conference November 20 - 22 in Des Moines.)

Another example was initiated last month when the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) and the California Integrated Waste Management Board entered into an interagency agreement to research and provide demonstration projects for use of compost and cocompost (biosolids) in erosion control applications. "We believe there is tremendous potential for using recycled organic materials in erosion control, revegetation and landscape projects. Caltrans will soon issue a Request for Proposal to public and private entities for this project," notes John Haynes, the state's Transportation Erosion Specialist.

Another interagency agreement which also occurred in August - this one at the federal level -- involved the EPA's Office of Wastewater and Enforcement and the USDA's Agricultural Research Service. The goal is to launch a cooperative effort to promote "holistic management of recyclable organic and inorganic resources." The Agreement provides for a series of activities "that will foster and improve sustainable use of these by-products in agriculture and to maximize beneficial impacts of their use in watersheds," explains John Walker of the EPA. As you read this issue of BioCycle, you'll find many other private-public and private-private examples of how the right connections are being made. A company called Biofine, Inc. is building a new plant in Glens Falls, New York to process papermill sludge into a marketable product, the result of an initiative by the state's Energy Research and Development Authority. A new EcoComplex in New Jersey -whose partners include public and private agencies, a county and NASA -hopes to spawn commercial ventures in plastics recycling, food processing residuals recovery and bioremediation.

As related in last month's editorial about organics and materials recycling in Maine, success comes from "finding the common ground among diverse participants - to work through areas of conflict and find the win-win solutions." As the right connections are aggressively achieved, recyclers and composters will be savoring those win-win deals.