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Adventure Traveler Garry Sowerby in his own words:
Friday, September 17, 2004
St. Catharines and Port Colborne, Ontario
Environmental Initiative #35
General Motors Engine Plant, St.
Catharines, Ontario
Mission Green came to St. Catharines to wish the General Motors
Engine Plant a Happy 50 th!
As we neared the plant, we almost sensed a
nostalgic yearning in our vehicles. After all, this is where
both the Chevrolet Hybrid Pickup and the GMC Yukon began. Their engines
were assembled in this plant. We felt as if we were in the science
fiction movie ‘Journey
to the Centre of the Earth’, like we were going to see the
inner workings.
The St. Catharines Engine Plant started up
production in 1954. It hasn’t really stopped since. It’s
a round-the-clock operation. After a shutdown, it takes up to
two days to start some of the systems up again.
Once the employees decided that something needed to be done to
lessen the Engine Plant's impact on the natural environment, many
programs were set up to ensure this would happen. In one year the
amount of waste sent to landfill decreased by 35%. Electricity
usage is down by 7%. Natural Gas consumption is down by 19% and
water consumption has decreased by 32%.
The Engine Plant recycles 100% of all metal scrap, wood waste,
oily waste, mixed paper and corrugated cardboard that it produces
from its operations.
The production of each engine used to contribute 3.6 kg of waste
to landfill. That number has now been reduced to 1.5 kg per engine.
As Virginia Campbell, Communications Officer for the Plant, Steve
Nemeth, Senior Environmental Officer and John Newton, Editor of
the Plant Newsletter, showed us around, I noted how clean the facility
was. You could eat your lunch off the floor in there.
But now Mission Green wanted to get down to
the nitty-gritty. We wanted the dirt, we wanted the poop, we
wanted the low-down on… The Swarf.
What is it? Where did the name come from? What do you do with
it?
We figured we’d come to the right place.
The St. Catharines Engine Plant had, after all, just won a community
recognition award for having figured out what to do with it.
The term ‘swarf’ originated in the diamond industry.
It’s amazing that, when you do an internet search for a term
we’d never heard before this afternoon, you get almost 10,000
references.
Well, at the St. Catharines facility, the single
most significant waste stream, occuring in many other industries
as well, is grinding swarf. Another name for it is hone sludge.
I think ‘swarf’ sounds
a bit more approachable.
Grinding swarf is a combination of finely ground metal particles
and abrasive material suspended in some type of coolant.
Steve Nemeth tells us that about 80% of the material is iron
filings, the other 20% is stone chips from the grinder and that
industries, not knowing what else to do with it, have historically
put grinding swarf into landfill.
Steve took it upon himself to try and figure out how to avoid
putting grinding swarf into landfill. Now this material is sent
to a metal recycler. The recycler separates out the stone chips
and re-manufactures the iron.
The incredible amount of 385 metric tonnes of grinding swarf
is now diverted from landfill.
Although I know this is serious and significant
stuff, we couldn’t
help but have a laugh at the word ‘swarf’. I’m
not sure about the rest of the Mission Green team but when Steve
showed us what it was, it wasn’t like anything I had thought
it would look like. It was grey and putty-like, quite innocuous-looking
really.
Other industries that produce ‘grinding swarf’ as
a waste product are now looking at recycling it as well. The movement
has taken on a life of its own and it’s thanks to Steve Nemeth.
“I guess that makes you ‘Papa Swarf’!” Bill
joked.
Steve replied, “You call me Papa Swarf and you’ll
be hearing from me!”
Steve, it’ll be great to hear from you
again.
St.
Catharines Engine
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an external website.
Environmental Initiative #36
International Marine Salvage, Port
Colborne, Ontario
“We’re one of the largest ship-breaking
companies in the world.”
Ship-breaking? Why on earth would you need to break a ship?
As Wayne Elliott, President and CEO, James Ewles,
Vice President Hazardous Waste Division and Richard Unyi, Vice
President Health, Safety and Environment of International Marine
Salvage explained to us, a ship that plies the Great Lakes has
a certain life span, like anything else. When a ship reaches the
end of its life, what can you do with it? One of these ships can
be up to 250 metres long. You can’t just toss it into a garbage
can.
So we’re talking ‘mega’ here.
Which, in itself, meant for an exciting visit this afternoon for
Mission Green in Port Colborne, which sits at the south end of
the Welland Canal that connects Lake Ontario to Lake Erie. We were
at the headquarters and primary operations facility of International
Marine Salvage, the only ISO 14001-registered ship breaking business
in the world.
The company uses tugboats to haul the spent ships
to their slip and here they begin the surprisingly basic, but exceedingly
and environmentally exact, process of dismantling or ‘breaking’ the
ship.
The towing alone is a gargantuan task. It’s
not like towing a car. These ships are as big as a football field.
International Marine Salvage has brought in and dismantled ships
from places like Duluth, Minnesota, Thunder Bay, Ontario and from
Montreal, Quebec to name a few.
It’s mostly a family-run business with Wayne’s
dad having started here in 1959 and Wayne as a 13-year-old, then
full-time since 1984. IMS employs 65 full-time staff as well as
part-timers and students in the summer.
When a ship first comes in, a crew of four removes all the asbestos,
most of which is insulating pipes in the stern of the ship. Then
they work on the engine. Workers go from top to bottom then forward
toward the bow through the decks. It takes about 2 months to remove
all of the asbestos.
The ship is then pulled up onto the beach stern
first and then… Let
the breaking begin!
Bit by bit, as the cutter cuts sections, a bit more of the ship
is pulled up onto the beach. And the cutter keeps munching away,
section by section.
Everything is Big. Monstrous metal pieces, giant chains, huge hatch
covers. And the cutter just keeps cuttng.
You can’t help but feel sorry for the ship.
These great pieces of machinery that plied the water and served
their purpose for many years are now dragged up onto the beach
and are slowly sliced into non-existence.
Today we witnessed the final demise of a ship
that had been on the beach for several months. It’s the first
time that the company has had to wait for the next ship to come
in. Usually there are at least three ships waiting to be broken.
What happens to all the pieces? Steel companies such as Stelco and
Dofasco accept the steel sections to re-manufacture them into something
else. Things like mooring and hydrolic winches and chains are used
by mining companies as blasting curtains. International Marine Salvage
has found a re-use for every piece.
We asked James Ewles if their company was the largest in the world.
He told us that the largest ship breaking business in the world is
in India. Over 1 million tons of steel in 39 different yards are
recycled there every year. Mega!
It had been a Heavy Metal day. Not in an Iron
Maiden or Queensryche kind of way, of course. But, starting from
our lessons in grinding swarf at GM’s St. Catharines Engine Plant to our Big afternoon
at International Marine Salvage’s ship-breaking yard, we felt
we had come a long way toward Metal Mastery.
http://www.rawmaterials.com
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