A History of Sustainability

Recycling Off-Spec Products

For a consumer products manufacturing plant, Heritage came up with a process to de-package and recycle off-spec products, which had previously gone to the incinerator. The process completely empties the container, allowing the product and its package to be reused or recycled.  It also provides a strong form of brand protection by rendering non-saleable products useless and completely destroying packaging. It took Heritage only 90 days to develop the process and build the facility. Heritage owns and operates the new facility, at no cost to the customer, who – by the way, is now seeing a 30-percent cost reduction per month.

EAF Dust

Heritage has researched and patented a process for stabilizing K061 Electric Arc Furnace (EAF) dust, a RCRA hazardous waste from the steel making process. EAF dust is the largest listed solid hazardous waste in the U.S., approaching one million tons per year. As part of our research, Heritage found ways to recover valuable metals out of the EAF dust. The benefit of the Heritage PIZO (Pig Iron Zinc Oxide) process is that it converts generators' waste into 100% reusable product. For more information about PIZO, please visit www.pizotech.com.

Tri Basic Copper Chloride

In 1992, Heritage started a research program to find alternative uses for etchants from printed circuit boards.  Our studies found that when certain etches were combined with each other a copper salt TBCC (Tri Basic Copper Chloride) was produced along with a reclaimed etchant. University studies found that TBCC was a vastly improved micronutrient in animal feed compared to its predecessor. Since 1995, roughly 35% of chickens, swine and turkeys in the U.S. have been raised on TBCC. In addition, 65% of the etchant used in the U.S. is reclaimed at our facility.

Zero Landfill

A large Japanese-owned manufacturing facility set a goal to achieve zero landfill in five years. Heritage assisted in meeting this goal in less than two years. The focus was on preventing waste generation, minimizing waste generation and finding reuse/recycle alternatives. At the beginning of the program, this manufacturer shipped 23 compacted loads of refuse to the landfill each month; today, they ship two compacted loads of refuse to a mass burn, energy cogeneration facility.

Heritage supplies the following services to the manufacturing industry:

Hach Company, the market leader in COD, partnered with Heritage Environmental Services, the largest private waste-disposal and recycling facility in the US to offer EZ COD recycling to Hach COD reagent customers. Wastewater treatment facilities and testing laboratories rely on Hach Chemical Oxygen Demand (COD) reagent for its quality and reliability.  Now, a new all-inclusive Hach EZ COD recycling service, for USA customers in the 48 contiguous states, secures you the lowest COD reagent recycling price possible and makes the recycling process easier than ever.

Heritage Crystal Clean

One of the first successful efforts was to establish a reuse program for Heritage Crystal Clean, a Heritage owned parts washer service that was established in the 1980’s.  Parts washer’s solvents were manifested due to the characteristic of the solvent.  However when the spent solvent is legitimately a feedstock for another product, manifesting is no longer necessary. This reuse program centers around providing top quality virgin solvent to our customers and removed used solvent as a product – not a waste.  This creative approach provides substantial benefits to our customers compared to the “old way” of parts cleaning.

Steel Slag

In 1998, a large North American steel company approached Heritage looking for a way to reuse a one-million-ton pile of steel slag, a non-hazardous by-product of the steel production process. At the time, Heritage had been looking for an aggregate that would help to improve friction on highways. After rigorous testing and researching was completed, the results revealed that steel slag was a viable solution for improving friction on the roadways. Since then, steel slag has been widely utilized in Indiana and Ohio for highway construction projects.

Shingle Recycling

Heritage developed a process that recycles shingles into a ground shingle product which is then incorporated into hot-mix asphalt. Currently, the largest market for recycled asphalt shingles is hot-mix asphalt.  Recycled asphalt shingles have several benefits such as reducing the demand on aggregate and virgin asphalt cement and improving the characteristics of hot-mix asphalt pavement.  As a result, recycled asphalt shingles in hot-mix asphalt applications contribute to cost savings for road paving projects. For questions regarding this service, please contact Rodney Pierce via email.