The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has funded a pilot project to assist small- and medium-size manufacturers who want to minimize their generation of hazardous waste but who lack the expertise to do so. Waste Minimization Assessment Centers (WMACs) were established at selected universities and procedures were adapted from the EPA Waste Minimization Opportunity Assessment Manual (EPA/625/7-88/003, July 1988). The WMAC team at Colorado State University inspected a plant refinishing steel, aluminum, and plastic bumpers. The plant is new and already incorporates many hazardous waste management features. After the bumpers are straightened, the processes to remove old plating and coating, the rinsing, the caustic cleaning for steel bumpers and de-smuting for aluminum ones, followed by more rinsing generates significant quantities of waste. Aluminum bumpers are then reanodized at another location; the steel bumpers are soaked in cleaning solutions and rinsed (and soaked and rinsed), creating still more waste, before being electrolytically replated with nickel and chromium. The team's report, detailing findings and recommendations, indicated that the greatest waste reduction could occur with the use of additional filtration along with the existing deionization systems. Their use would reduce chromium and nickel levels in rinse waters and other liquid streams to levels acceptable for recycle to the plant. The collected solids would go to a landfill for disposal. Because steel and aluminum bumpers generate the most waste, plastic bumpers were not considered for the purpose of the assessment. The Research Brief was developed by the principal investigators and EPA's Risk Reduction Engineering Laboratory, Cincinnati, OH, to announce key findings of an ongoing research project that is fully documented in a separate report of the same title available from the authors.

Caption title. Shipping list no.: 91-555-P. "July 1991." "EPA/600-M-91-020."