Metal finishers in Los Angeles in California are moving toward greenness in cooperation with several local agencies.
Miguel RodasThe Los Angeles Sanitation and Environment (LASAN) Industrial Waste Management Division (IWMD) granted the Compliance History Awards, the Special LA Industry Award, and the Special Green Award to six Significant Industrial Users (SIUs) during a ceremony held at City Hall in 2023. Michael Simpson, IWMD’s manager, presented the awards on that occasion.
Burbank Plating, California Metal Plating, Electromatic, Pacific Plating, Brite Plating, and Accurate Engineering all received major awards.
An SIU is defined as (a) any discharger of regulated industrial wastewater that is subject to National Categorical Pretreatment Standards as established in the Code of Federal Regulations Part 403.3(t) (categorical SIU); (b) any other industrial user (IU) that discharges process wastewater at an average of 25,000 gallons or more per day; or (c) any industrial user that is designated by the Director of LASAN to have a reasonable potential to adversely affect the operation of the publicly-owned treatment works (POTW), or for violating any pretreatment standard or requirement.
The Compliance History Award is granted to active SIUs for demonstrating compliance with permit conditions. The Special LA Industry Award is granted to an IU for building collaborative partnerships with IWMD to promote regulatory compliance, economic sustainability, and the adoption of processes that are safer for human health and the environment. The Special Green Award is granted to a facility for adopting process substitution, elimination, or reduction of chemicals of concern in its operations and implementing water conservation controls and techniques. The IU was evaluated by the Metal Finishers Champion Group (MFSCG ) using a checklist. These awards were granted to SIUs and presented at the City of Los Angeles Board of Public Works (BPW) and LASAN IWMD.
The current members of the MFCG are Edward Calleros (Leader), Ernesto Lozano, Jan Marte, Clifford Chang, and Miguel Rodas.
Under the leadership of Michael Simpson, the LA Industry Program was created in 2016 to advance green chemistry across all industrial sectors. The Champion’s Program was organized in 2018 to implement LA Industry's goals to promote environmental compliance, economic sustainability, Environmental Justice, and the mainstreaming of green chemistry principles (GC). Composed of IWMD’s engineering and inspection staff, the Champions groups explain environmental regulations, pollution prevention (P2), and source control practices in manufacturing. The two programs’ coordinated efforts are incentivizing P2 practices, promoting clean and green manufacturing, and advancing green chemistry jointly with the industry. IWMD is helping metal finishers and other IUs find less harmful chemicals and processes that meet changing regulations and market demands, staying competitive while embracing the new green revolution.
Award 1: Compliance History Award
Each SIU facility has a specific set of discharge limitations depending on the type of operation. To be considered part of the new green generation of metal finishers, SIUs had to have no discharge violations, no non-discharge violations, and no payment delinquencies within the last four years. The following four SIUs maintained all their industrial wastewater permit conditions and have duly earned the Compliance History Award:
- Burbank Plating
- California Metal Plating
- Electromatic, Inc.
- Pacific Plating
Award 2: Special LA Industry Award
The Special LA Industry Award honors industries working collaboratively with the City of Los Angeles. Creating a business-friendly partnership helps to achieve a cycle of sustainability that benefits our environment, economy, and community. Implementing greener practices is difficult and expensive, and efforts to do so often go unrecognized by the public, so IWMD created the Special LA Industry Award so that IUs making such efforts and investments become models for other businesses and other cities to emulate. The Special LA Industry Award was granted to Brite Plating, Co.
The Impacts of Chemistry on Industry and Future Challenges
Chemistry has made our current lives possible by bringing unprecedented economic growth. The commercial, aerospace/military, medical/pharmaceutical, food processing, and many other industries cannot survive without products of the metal finishing operations: electroplating, anodizing, chemical conversion, chemical milling and etching, and the manufacturing of printed circuits boards (PCBs). Chemicals such as cyanide, cadmium, chromic acid, hexavalent chromium, lead, mercury, nitric acid, and many others are essential to the finishing of metal parts, but they are also hazardous, toxic, and dangerous to human health and to the environment.
Chemicals made in the past, however, were designed with only cost and profitability in mind; the harmful impacts were not known or simply ignored. Even though green chemistry principles and new governing policies have promoted the creation of new, safer, cleaner, and more sustainable chemicals, metal finishers are still faced with two great challenges: An increased regulatory landscape, and at the operational level, the new chemicals must deliver the same or equivalent results on finished products as the chemicals currently used. Financially, such operational changes involve very expensive capital investments that do not guarantee commensurate returns.
Award 3: Special Green Chemistry Award
Accurate Engineering is a categorical SIU that manufactures PCBs. PCB manufacturing, one of the metal finishing operations, typically requires the use of lead, a chemical long known to be harmful. Accurate Engineering removed the lead tank from its production line; instead, Accurate Engineering only uses tin, a metal that is not regulated because it is far less hazardous and less toxic. Tin electroplating is an environmentally friendly plating alternative that eliminates lead from its processes and creates more opportunities for reuse, recycling, and reclamation of raw materials and catalysts. Accurate Engineering’s adoption of a lead-free plating process is a great change worthy of recognition by itself.
Source reduction is the manifestation of one of the 12 Principles of Green Chemistry: the Pollution Prevention Principle. Another manifestation is the conservation of water and energy. Accurate Engineering implemented measures towards conserving water, installing water flow controls, and countering current rinses in their facility. A new, more effective filter press was acquired to dewater filtered solids and precipitated metal salts prior to off-site reclamation, thus recovering more water for reuse. They also replaced their boilers, cooling towers, and rectifiers with energy-efficient units, reducing resource use and waste while setting the stage for long-term financial savings.
Improvements to operations and maintenance are vitally important, not just for meeting environmental regulations but also for the sustainability of a business. Accurate Engineering improved their wastewater pretreatment system because they were found to be deficient. Copper, a referent from the electroplating process tank, was being found at levels exceeding the federal limits during a routine inspection. The exceedance indicated that the Best Practical Technologies (BPT) model (referring to conventional waste treatment that includes the physical segregation, sedimentation, and removal of solids, and the chemical precipitation of metals and other dissolved contaminants) was operating below the model standards set by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
Accurate Engineering improved its pretreatment system from a less-than-BPT model to a system equivalent to the Best Available Technologies (BAT) model. First, the wastewater is segregated, separating metal-laden and non-metal-laden waste streams. The metal-laden wastewater is then rinsed with proprietary chemicals that target the maximum chemical precipitation of copper. Removal of the resulting copper hydroxide salt is enhanced by passing the waste stream through a newly-acquired lamella clarifier that was engineered to maximize the physical sedimentation of the solid precipitate. About $45,000 of investments into the pretreatment system has resulted in cleaner wastewater discharges, less harmful solid wastes, and a stable and sustainable return to compliance with environmental regulations and requirements.
The New Landscape of Green Chemistry
The Green Chemistry and Commerce Council stated that “green chemistry incorporates every element of [a] business,” including all the aspects of running a business and not just “the change in manufacturing practices to substitute or reduce the use of hazardous chemicals.” Emerging restrictions such as the RoHS are increasingly being adopted by more US Federal and California State regulatory agencies. Manufacturers that continue to be unaware or unprepared to respond to such restrictions risk losing market share in important sectors.
Chemistry has shown us its power to change the world we live in. The current chemical landscape, however, has set the world on an unsustainable trajectory as many chemicals used in many industries are inherently toxic, hazardous, and dangerous for the environment and human health. The future role of green chemistry is indeed important to the sustainability of industries and, ultimately, of us all. We are all stakeholders and beneficiaries, and we all have a responsibility to contribute towards our own sustainable future.
With that perspective in mind, LASAN IWMD will keep working with IUs to find greener processes and water conservation and identify operations and maintenance practices that promote both the health of people and the environment as well as the thriving of industries and the economy. As we look into the future, we can and should remain optimistic that the science of chemistry and its new philosophical approach will aim at making our world safer, cleaner, and more sustainable. LA Industry’s outreach to manufacturers and other businesses has already changed adversarial and confrontational behavior, establishing new cooperative relationships with the industry. The MFCG will continue to communicate new regulations, new processes, new chemicals, and new operational opportunities for businesses to thrive and remain sustainable. We should then continue to recognize, support, promote, and celebrate greener businesses like Burbank Plating, California Metal Plating, Electromatic, Pacific Plating, Brite Plating, and Accurate Engineering.
Miguel Rodas is the Senior Environmental Compliance Inspector for the IWMD and SIU groups for the City of Los Angeles Sanitation and Environment. Visit www.lacitysan.org. Special thanks to Jan Marte, an Environmental Compliance Inspector (ECI) and member of the MFCG, for editing this paper.
