st22

SprayjJun14

Aerosols & Recycling Given the public’s concerns about solid waste disposal, the aerosol industry teamed with the steel industry to include empty aerosol cans in recycling programs around the country. Today, more than 7,541 municipal locations nationwide include empty aerosols for recycling as part of their steel can mix in both curbside and drop-off programs. Many aerosol cans are made of steel and can be recycled along with any other empty steel containers. Post-consumer steel cans (aerosol, food, beverage and paint) are needed to make new steel cans, and aerosol cans contain an average of 25% recycled content. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), household waste (including aerosol cans) is excluded from the definition of hazardous waste under the federal Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) regulations. Thus, household aerosol cans collected and subsequently managed in municipal recycling programs are not subject to various hazardous waste management regulations and can be safely and effectively recycled with other steel cans. Many recyclers and community recycling officials are not aware that the EPA recommends that all aerosols—including pesticide containers—be recycled once empty. Consumers should encourage their communities to accept empty aerosol cans along with other metal containers. For more information, contact Greg Crawford, Executive Director of the Steel Recycling Institute, at 412-922-2772, Ext. 206. Interest in aerosol recycling laid the foundation for an important document, the NFPA 30B Code for the Manufacture and Storage of Aerosol Products, First Edition 1990. The origins of NFPA 30B At a 1981 meeting of the CSMA Aerosol Board, key industry members brought to our attention the need for a major effort concerning the storage and warehousing of aerosol products. Following the meeting, the Aerosol Storage & Manufacturing Committee was initiated and is still working today. The effort was initiated in 1979 after a major marketer’s warehouse was inspected. The assessment identified all aerosols as Class 1A flammable liquids, which should be stored one pallet high. We realized that we had no code or listing covering our products and made a commitment with leaders of the Los Angeles County Fire Dept. to embark on a research effort with Factory Mutual Insurance (FM) to address this issue. This three-year effort bought us time to do the research and provided fire officials and authorities with a very positive answer. This CSMA program with FM, as well as with Underwriter Laboratories (UL) and Southwest Research, is documented as performing close to 90 full-scale fire tests with an expenditure of over $5.2 million. A strong collaboration between CSMA and WAIB’s support team inspired a five-part series of articles, written by CSPA’s current Senior Science Fellow Doug Fratz and published in Chemical Times & Trends titled, “An Industry’s Response: A Technical History of the CSMA Aerosol Warehousing & Storage Fire Protection Research Program.” These articles documented the aerosol industry’s $5.2 million effort. They have been used repeatedly since then as a document for fire officials covering the development of “Early Suppression, Fast Response (ESFR) Sprinkler Technology” in support of the safer storage of aerosol products. This spurred the development of the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) 30B Code for the Manufacture & Storage of Aerosol Products in 1988. 22 SPRAY June 2014


SprayjJun14
To see the actual publication please follow the link above