During the 1980s, the Institute also worked with small and large businesses that were developing products that advanced waste reduction, recycling, and scrap-based manufacturing. These services included developing business plans, identifying financing, and linking businesses to local development officials.
In 1985, ILSR began offering regular seminars on solid waste management and economic development. Over 2,000 businesses, community organization and government representatives have attended these seminars to learn about available products, business expansion plans and local and state policies that promote scrap-based economic development. Seminars have been held in California, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, and Washington.
Since 1989 the Institute has targeted specific cities and worked on an extended basis to make waste management an integral element in an economic development strategy. In these communities our efforts include:
Since 1990, our efforts have helped to establish more than 15 businesses with about 250 employees and attract about $20 million in new investment to low-income and working class communities.
ILSR served as technical advisor to the City Council, the Audubon Society, and several grassroots organizations. Acting on ILSR's advice, in March 1992 the City Council awarded the Orange Grove Center an exclusive marketing and processing contract for municipal recyclables. The Center, which employs more than 600 handicapped workers, receives an estimated $200,000 annually from this contract, sale of materials, and fees from the city. The Institute enlisted the assistance of national corporations to ensure that the Center receives the best prices for its processed glass. These and other efforts helped in the Center's campaign to secure $6 million in grants and loans for the construction of a new processing center, on-site employee housing and a therapy center. Orange Grove currently has processing and marketing contracts from three other regional jurisdictions, and exclusive marketing arrangements with a regional glass mill.
Baltimore, Maryland
ILSR has worked with the Baltimore Jobs in Energy Project (BJEP), the Baltimore Recycling Coalition (BRC) and a citywide coalition to successfully persuade the city to close an old incinerator. These three organizations also serve as advisors to a special task force created by the City Council to implement a scrap-based economic development program. Working with these community development and environmental groups, the Institute convinced the city to redesign its twice a week collection of residential garbage to feature once a week waste collection and once a week recyclables collection. Anticipated annual savings from the program, which will be fully operational in January 1994 is $4.5 to $6 million.
The task force then asked the ILSR, BJEP, and BRC to focus on economic development projects. ILSR designed a joint-venture and facilitated negotiations between a church-based community development organization and a regional hauling company. These parties are now bidding together for a city recycling contract. In addition, the Institute identified five scrap based business firms interested in expanding their operations into Baltimore.
ILSR, BJEP, and BRC continue to work with the City Council, the Office of Recycling, the Baltimore Development Corporation and private developers to site scrap-based manufacturing plants in Baltimore.
Cleveland, Ohio
ILSR worked with the City Council and the Department of Public Services (DPS) to plan and implement recycling, procurement, and economic development programs. Innovations adopted by the DPS will save more than $14 million over four years in reduced landfill fees; $1 million in reduced street paving costs over the same four year period; and $500,000 in recycling containers. The city has also entered into contracts valued at $250,000 with grassroots recycling groups.
ILSR is also working with Aluminum Waste Technology, Inc. (AWT), a company that recycles dross and salt cake, wastes generated by aluminum recycling. The company employs 50 workers with average wages of $11 per hour and has a payroll over $1 million.
A recent controversy over the dross and salt cake recycling process threatened AWT's operation. The aluminum industry attempted to have the dross recycling technology subjected to hazardous waste regulations, although the aluminum industry's own disposal of these materials is exempt from such regulations. The Institute published two articles on the issue: one in a national trade journal, the other as a Facts To Act On, the newsletter of the Grass Roots Alliance for Solid-Waste Solutions, a coalition of 300 grassroots organizations. The publicity and efforts by community groups led to the tabling of the hazardous waste issue. Shortly thereafter, AWT signed a dross processing contract with German and Austrian firms; dumping the waste product is illegal in both countries.
ILSR is currently trying to convince Indiana's state regulatory commission to declare dross recycling the Best Available Control Technology for pollution reduction under Indiana regulations. If this were done and other states followed suit, 15-20 additional dross/salt cake recycling plants could open throughout the country, each employing 100 workers at industrial wage scales. The Institute is helping to identify sites in southern California, northern Indiana and the Southeast.
ILSR has also participated in discussions with the Industrial Solid Waste Branch of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to explore regulatory and non-regulatory strategies to convert dross into an industrial feedstock as part of an economic development strategy.
Gary, Indiana
The Institute helped secure financing for the expansion of a small recycling company, 2-Ladies Recycling, which operated drop-off sites at local supermarkets and parking lots. The Institute then facilitated the development of a joint venture, Community Recycling Inc. between 2 Ladies Recycling and the Gary Clean City Coalition. Through this new venture, the partners will expand to operate thirty drop-off sites in Center City and Lake County. ILSR helped draft the business plan for this inner-city/county program. The city of Gary has contributed land and agreed to construct a building that will house the processing center for the drop-off network. We anticipate the enterprise will generate $300,000 annually and create more than 30 jobs. The program also includes a revenue sharing component for the network of African-American church groups that are helping to maintain the drop-off sites.
Evansville, Indiana
Since 1990, the Institute has been working on recycling and economic development projects with community and environmental groups and the Sewer District. One result has been the establishment of a pilot curbside collection program. ILSR is helping the Solid Waste District and the Evansville Urban Enterprise Association (EUEA) to establish an industrial park which will include a processing plant for household and commercial recyclables. The Lilly Endowment awarded the EUEA a $400,000 planning and equity investment grant and a private firm has been selected as the EUEA's joint-venture partner. The project has already raised the $1.1 million capital investment to implement this initial phase. This will create 15 jobs for low-income Evansville residents. A pulp mill and a metal stamping plant are expected to be established in the second stage of the project.
Los Angeles, California
Since 1985, the Institute has worked with an interracial coalition of civic associations and environmental organizations. We provided technical assistance to the community's successful effort to cancel LANCER, a five-incinerator system that would have cost $2.5 billion. Subsequently, Los Angeles initiated a recycling program but began to award contracts to national companies with no ties to the community. The ILSR worked with community coalitions, the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Public Works Commission to alter the city's contracting procedures to favor firms that establish joint-ventures with community development corporations.
The contracting regulations were changed in 1992. ILSR then negotiated a model joint venture between a national recycling company and a community-based recycling enterprise. To date, one joint venture has been established to provide transfer and recycling services in two districts, creating 43 new jobs for L.A. residents. In addition, a $1.5 million revolving loan fund was established to aid a local African-American business development organization in its effort to build an industrial park for scrap-based manufacturers. The ILSR has developed a business plan for a joint venture aluminum smelting enterprise to be located in the park.
We are now applying the joint venture concept to manufacturing. Working with the L.A. Office of Integrated Solid Waste Management, created after the cancellation of LANCER, the ILSR helped establish a 230-acre scrap-based manufacturing industrial park. The site has become a state-designated Recycling Market Development Zone (RMDZ). Recently, the city has applied to extend the Zone to include the entire city. The zone will be administered by the Mayor's office.
The Institute also helped create a smaller industrial park in South Central Los Angeles. The Neighborhood Beverage Company, the first enterprise to locate in the zone, expects to employ 250 people by the end of 1994. Twenty-eight million dollars will be invested to refurbish an abandoned bottling plant. The ILSR is currently facilitating three other joint ventures between CDCs and manufacturers in Los Angeles and Compton, California. Total planned investment is $10 million which should generate 85-120 new jobs. The Institute currently serves as advisor to the California Department of Conservation on recycling and economic development in Compton, California.
ILSR continues to work with the Office of Integrated Solid Waste Management. In the next three years, the Office anticipates that its assistance to L.A.'s private sector could reduce waste related business operating costs by $300 million.
Washington, D.C.
In 1991, ILSR issued a detailed report Recycling and Economic Development in Washington, D.C. The report unveiled a strategy that included converting an existing D.C. transfer station into a used materials processing center and converting an abandoned incinerator site into a scrap-based manufacturing park. The report called for a $20 million investment and projected a $20 million annual savings to the city government and local haulers in reduced disposal costs. One hundred workers would be employed in the processing facilities alone. The report was enthusiastically supported by local haulers. A group of minority investors, organized by the Booker T. Washington Foundation, raised $5 million in financial commitments. The Institute is working with the city's Environmental Planning Commission to implement this project.
On contract with ARCH Development Corporation (a venture of Potomac Electric Power Company) ILSR identified and analyzed several scrap-based manufacturing enterprises. One venture is in the final stages of negotiation. It will attract $100,000 in investment to the low-income Anacostia section of D.C. and create 30 high wage jobs.
For several years, we have worked with a coalition of District organizations to change the city's waste management policy from incineration to recycling and economic development. We influenced the city to cancel an incinerator that would have cost $100 per ton to operate and have proposed as an alternative a processing system that will cost $30 per ton to operate.
As in Los Angeles and Baltimore, the Institute also helped D.C. change its bidding procedures to favor local firms and CDCs. In conjunction with local community and environmental organizations, ILSR persuaded the city to require firms receiving city contracts to operate in the District. As a direct result, a minority owned recycling company, in a joint venture with a CDC, was awarded a $3 million multi-year municipal recycling contract. We are currently negotiating with the D.C. government to set aside several million dollars for a school, apartment, and condominium recycling contract. That contract may be awarded to local CDCs and worker cooperatives formed by ex-offenders and homeless citizens. In December 1993, the city issued a Request for Proposals for bulky waste recycling, specifying that the contract be awarded to a venture with no less than 50 percent community organization participation.
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Since 1984 ILSR has been working in Philadelphia. At that time, at the request of the Clean Air Coalition, our staff presented a detailed analysis of available options to resolve the city's recurring solid waste management crises. From 1985 through l991, the Institute served as the principal solid waste consultant to the Philadelphia City Council. On behalf of the City Council, ILSR conducted extensive hearings that documented the health risks associated with the City's proposed 2,000 ton per day incinerator at the Philadelphia Navy Yard.
ILSR then developed a comprehensive recycling and economic development plan that was accepted by the City Council and implemented beginning in 1985. In accordance with this plan, ILSR prepared innovative legislation that promotes the active participation of civic and environmental organizations and small businesses dedicated to recycling and economic development. Philadelphia became the first major city in the U.S. to adopt mandatory recycling with a fifty percent recycling goal.
Since l986, Philadelphia's solid waste program has helped site or expand 36 scrap-based manufacturing operations in the Philadelphia area (twenty inside the city limits). More than 700 jobs have been created and three new plants are being planned that will generate an additional 640 jobs.
ILSR recruited and trained the City's first generation of recycling technicians for its newly formed Office of Recycling. In late l992, working through the transition team, ILSR advised Mayor Rendell's administration on economic development strategies. In March l993, we joined a special task force headed by the City's Department of Commerce to promote scrap-based manufacturing. In September l993, the ILSR facilitated a Philadelphia-U.S. Environmental Protection Agency partnership to promote scrap-based manufacturing program. The ILSR also advises the Department of Commerce on the program.