By Richard Golob
President
World Information Systems
Since the mid-1990s, environmental technology companies have been encountering serious difficulties in raising the necessary funding for the commercialization process. Investors have become increasingly sophisticated about the factors for success in developing commercially viable environmental technologies, and have tightened the screening criteria for potential investments. And yet, without adequate financing, the most innovative companies will not succeed in bringing their environmental technologies to market.
What are these factors for success? Because the environmental industry is highly fragmented, ranging from remediation and solid waste management to wastewater treatment and air pollution control to recycling and resource recovery, it is difficult to create a winning formula that applies to environmental technologies in all of the industry sectors. However, the development of such a formula may provide a useful measure in determining whether a specific environmental technology has the potential to serve as the basis for a new environmental company.
To achieve significant success, an innovative environmental technology must provide a "better, cheaper, and faster" solution than the competing technologies. An environmental technology that fulfills only one or two of these three measures will not create the necessary foundation for a major new company. As a result, such a technology will not attract the needed capital for full commercialization and will not succeed in displacing the existing technologies in the marketplace.
In addition, for an environmental technology company to survive and thrive, it needs to have a significant new core technology, not simply a variation on an existing one. The environmental technology also needs to have both U.S. and foreign patent protection. In terms of better, cheaper, and faster, the technology must fulfill all three measures in a dramatic way. An environmental technology that achieves only incremental improvements will not support the creation of a major company; rather it might serve as an extension to an existing product line or provide a licensing opportunity for a larger, established company.
While the better, cheaper, and faster model offers a quantitative measure for assessing a technology's potential, the core environmental technology must also meet several qualitative measures to succeed. The technology must have global applications, indicating that its market is not totally dependent on a specific U.S. regulation. In addition, the tech-nology's market must cut across several different industries; if its market is a niche in a single industry, the environmental technology will probably not succeed as the basis for a new company.
Perhaps most importantly, the successful environmental technologies will need to have a regulatory push and an economics pull. The concept that "future environmental technologies will be economics-driven, not regulatory-driven" is perhaps an overstatement, because any technology that runs counter to an existing regulation will likely fail. At the same time, successful environmental technologies must provide a strong economic benefit to the user so that, even if the regulations change or enforcement efforts slacken, the technologies will still have strong commercial appeal.
In addition, successful environmental technologies will need to be based largely on a circular economic model, whereby waste is minimized while reuse and recycling are maximized, and whereby zero emissions and zero discharge are the ultimate goals. Traditional environmental technologies have followed the linear, end-of-the-pipe model, emphasizing treatment and disposal. Once again, those technologies that improve the company's industrial performance and its bottom line are most likely to succeed.
Industry experts are now even debating whether environmental technologies will someday be dubbed "industrial technologies," because these technologies will have been integrated into the overall industrial process. They will be driven primarily by financial payback, not by regulatory issues, and as an additional benefit, they will offer superior environmental performance.
While investors will first analyze an environmental technology company in terms of its technology's potential, they will also place a high priority on the company's management, as the commercialization process is arduous, and only the best management teams prevail. Investors look for management teams that have succeeded in other technology commercialization efforts and that have a combination of technical and business skills. For success in the commercialization process, a company must make the shift from a technology-driven to a market-driven operation, and only a management team with a strong business focus will be able to make that transition.
Environmental technology companies will succeed in attracting funding if they can demonstrate a strong financial payback not only to their customers but also to their investors. Venture capital funds seek companies that will grow from a startup to $50 million in annual revenues within three to five years and that will provide a return of ten times the investment within that time period. Individual investors offer an alternative funding source for startup environmental companies, as these investors often have a longer time horizon and a lower anticipated rate of return than venture capital firms.
Increasingly, environmental technology companies have begun to seek out funding and support through alliances with strategic partners and participation in government programs. While startup biotechnology companies have the pharmaceutical industry as potential partners, environmental technology companies have not enjoyed a similarly strong relationship with another industry. Now the large environmental engineering and consulting firms have begun to realize that technology can help provide a way to differentiate themselves from their competitors and so have become increasingly interested in new technologies.
Richard Golob is president of World Information Systems, a Cambridge-based environmental business consulting and publishing company; he provides strategic planning, financing, and marketing advisory services to environmental service and technology companies. For further information, call Tel: 617-491-5100.
The control of mercury pollution is a high priority at both the federal and state levels. A 1997 report from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) found that U.S. mercury emissions arising from human activities total about 158 tons a year. Although this amount may seem small, it is nevertheless significant, because certain forms of mercury are highly toxic and accumulate over time in the tissues of fish, other animals, and humans.
Mercury exposure is particularly hazardous during pregnancy, since women who eat contaminated foods can pass mercury to their unborn children, who are very sensitive to its toxic effects. In Massachusetts, the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) has identified nearly 50 mercury-contaminated lakes and streams, and issued advisories warning residents--particularly pregnant women--about the dangers of consuming fish from these water bodies.
The Massachusetts DEP reported in 1996 that statewide mercury emis-sions totaled about 5.5 tons per year. In Massachusetts, municipal solid waste (MSW) combustors are responsible for 56 percent of the state's total mercury emissions. Coal, residual oil, and distillate fuel combustion together account for another 30 percent of the Massachusetts emissions total. The other three major mercury emissions sources in the state are medical waste incinerators (7 percent), municipal wastewater releases (5 percent), and sludge incinerators (1 percent).
Since the majority of mercury pollution can be traced to combustion-related air emissions, the U.S. EPA has promulgated regulations to limit such emissions. Under the Clean Air Act, EPA issued a final rule in October 1995 establishing mercury emissions standards for MSW combustors, and another final rule in August 1997 setting mercury emissions limits for medical waste incinerators. These standards are expected to reduce mercury emissions from MSW combustors by about 90 percent, and from medical waste incinerators by about 94 percent. In April 1996, EPA proposed another rule that would cut mercury emissions from hazardous waste incinerators by about 80 percent.
The Universal Waste Rule (UWR), issued by EPA in May 1995, simplified the requirements for the handling and disposal of designated "universal wastes," including thermostats--which contain significant amounts of mercury--as well as batteries and pesticides. Before the UWR was implemented, these items were considered hazardous wastes under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA), and were subject to RCRA's extensive requirements for waste labeling, transportation, and disposal.
In practice, however, many businesses failed to meet these RCRA requirements and often disposed of their thermostats, batteries, and pesticides with municipal waste. By simplifying the requirements for universal wastes, and thereby reducing the paperwork and costs associated with disposing of these wastes, EPA hopes to increase recycling and encourage proper disposal of these wastes.
Last October, DEP adopted a modified version of the federal UWR that expands on the federal definition of universal waste to include mercury-containing lights and any other devices--such as manometers, switches, and thermometers--that contain free-flowing mercury. The Massachusetts rule also sets specific requirements for the collection, transportation, dismantling, recycling, and disposal of these materials.
"The Massachusetts market for recycling mercury-containing lights and other materials is expanding and will continue to increase" as a result of the state's UWR, according to Judy Shope, the recycling policy coordinator at DEP's Bureau of Waste Prevention. She said that, even before the rule became effective, several companies inside and outside Massachusetts began offering services to take apart, recover, and recycle the valuable components of mercury lamps and batteries.
DEP's 1997 Recycling Services Directory and Markets Guide for Massachusetts lists a total of seven Massachusetts companies and nine out-of-state firms that recycle mercury-containing lamps, bulbs, and ballasts from communities and businesses in Massachusetts. One of these companies, Global Recycling Technologies, is profiled on page 4 of this issue.
The Commonwealth is also currently developing new rules limiting emissions of mercury and other toxics from municipal waste combustion and medical waste incineration. These new rules, together with stringent federal requirements, "will provide strong encouragement for facilities to reduce the use and disposal of mercury-containing materials," according to Shope. She noted that a number of Massachusetts communities--including Amherst, Franklin County, and the Cape Cod region--now provide curbside collection of fluorescent lamps and certain chemical wastes or operate drop-off centers for these materials.
The state's first permanent, regional, household hazardous waste facility--which will handle wastes containing mercury and other toxics--is scheduled to be completed in Lexington later this year. Built with funding from the state's Clean Environment Fund, the Lexington facility will serve eight eastern Massachusetts communities. Wastes will be separated by type for recycling or reuse when appropriate. Non-recyclable wastes will be shipped to haz-ardous waste facilities for disposal.
Since medical and dental facilities are substantial sources of mercury emissions in Massachusetts, DEP and other state agencies have been studying approaches for controlling these discharges. "Selective purchasing is one extremely effective way of reducing the generation of mercury-containing wastes and other toxic materials," according to Eric Friedman, the environmental purchasing coordinator for the state's Operational Services Division (OSD). Friedman said that OSD, DEP, and EOEA's Office of Technical Assistance for Toxics Use Reduction are working with the Toxics Action Coalition to identify hospital products that contain fewer potentially toxic constituents such as mercury and to make the product list available to health-care facilities.
The Toxic Reduction and Control Department (TRAC) at the Massachusetts Water Resources Authority (MWRA) has been working to reduce the mercury discharges in hospital waste streams. Last year, MWRA issued enforcement orders to more than 20 hospitals, requiring those facilities with wastewater consistently containing more than 4 parts per billion (ppb) of mercury to install "end-of-pipe" systems to reduce their mercury discharges. Those facilities with wastewater containing less than 4 ppb of mercury were ordered to reduce their mercury discharges through source reduction and infrastructure improvement.
The STEP program has contributed to MWRA's enforcement efforts by identifying promising mercury-control technologies and conducting bench-scale tests of these technologies. This year, STEP is providing $120,000 to fund a pilot test of technologies developed by four vendors: Innovative Chemicals and Environmental Technologies (Norwood); SolmeteX (Billerica); a joint venture of Prosys (Billerica) and DuBois Chemicals (Providence, RI); and ATA Technologies (Cleveland, OH). The tests will be conducted at Brigham and Women's Hospital, Newton-Wellesley Hospital, and possibly one or two other facilities.
TRAC has also been evaluating mercury discharges from dental facilities, which account for at least 10 percent of the total amount of mercury discharged into the sewage treatment systems under MWRA's jurisdiction. To help address this problem, TRAC and the Massachusetts Dental Society recently developed and distributed a brochure outlining voluntary measures that dental facilities can take to reduce mercury discharges. TRAC is also considering pilot tests of simple filtration and particle-separation equipment for removing mercury from dental waste streams.
EPA estimates that about two-thirds (107 tons) of U.S. annual mercury emissions are deposited on land or water outside the country, while about 32 tons of mercury emitted from non-U.S. sources are deposited here. Similarly, DEP estimates that more than 3.5 of the 5.5 tons of mercury released from Massachusetts sources each year are deposited outside the state. About 60 percent of the mercury deposited in Massachusetts comes from out-of-state sources.
Because mercury can be transported long distances by winds and currents across state and national boundaries, regional and international approaches are needed to address mercury pollution. Toward this end, state and provincial environmental agencies in the northeastern U.S. and eastern Canada are now working on a detailed Mercury Action Plan, which will be issued this summer. The plan will provide a framework for the participating environmental agencies to coordinate their efforts to reduce mercury emissions.
Massachusetts municipalities recycled about 33 percent of their solid waste during 1997--up from 32 percent in 1996--according to the Massachusetts Executive Office of Environmental Affairs' (EOEA's) most recent Municipal Recycling Report Card. A record 180 communities received an "A" grade, meaning that they recycled better than 30 percent of their solid waste. A total of 35 municipalities recycled 50 percent of their wastes or more.
The 1997 recycling rate falls far short of the state's goal of 46 percent by the year 2000, acknowledged Massachusetts Environmental Affairs Secretary Trudy Coxe. "I'm not willing to throw in the towel yet," she said in an interview with Massachusetts Environmental Ventures.
Coxe pointed out that EOEA and the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) have a wide variety of programs to encourage increased recycling among municipalities and businesses and to strengthen the other two key links in the recycling chain--establishing an infrastructure of companies that process recycled materials, and promoting the purchase of recycled products among state agencies, municipalities, and private businesses.
As an example of an initiative to stimulate the "supply" side, Coxe announced last March the availability of $2.2 million for the Municipal Recycling Incentive Program (MRIP), under which 237 municipalities whose recycling programs have met certain performance requirements will receive incentive payments for each ton of solid waste recycled, and $1.4 million in additional municipal grants for trucks, curbside bins, educational materials, and technical assistance. DEP is also encouraging municipalities to adopt unit-based-pricing, or "pay as you throw" programs, under which residents pay for each bag of garbage that they put on the curb for pickup and disposal.
One initiative in the state's effort to promote increased recycling among businesses is a cardboard-recycling program that was launched last December on Boston's Newbury Street. The program was funded by a grant from EOEA and organized by WasteCap of Massachusetts, a public-private partnership that provides businesses with technical assistance in waste recycling and reduction.
Under the Newbury Street initiative, about 30 retail businesses have signed up to recycle their cardboard waste, joining about 40 Newbury Street businesses that already recycle cardboard. The key hurdle for the program was the limited space at these establishments to store the card-board for recycling, but Save That Stuff (Charlestown), the collection contractor for the program, offered a frequent pickup schedule and free pickup service for the first month.
"I have 15 to 20 accounts that were getting me down there Monday through Friday anyway, so I offered a free month to any businesses that would participate," said Save That Stuff owner Erik Levy. "The cost of my service is half the price of paying for trash collection," he noted.
Businesses such as those on Newbury Street "like the sentiment of recycling to the maximum," but they have little time to evaluate collection and recycling alternatives, said Secretary Coxe. "We've tried to make it easy for them to get information, to answer questions," she noted. "We do the behind-the-scenes work that will have a ripple effect." In general, Massachusetts businesses have a very positive attitude towards recycling, she added. "We don't have to fight hard to get things off the ground."
DEP has several programs to expand the recycling infrastructure in Massachusetts and to encourage innovation in the use of recyclables. For example, the Recycling Loan Fund (RLF) provides loans to small recycling firms that would otherwise have difficulty raising the necessary capital. During FY 1998, HandsOn Toys (Woburn), a toy distributor that has developed a line of recycled foam balls, and Erickson Materials (Woburn), a maker of rubber powder from waste tires, have each received $300,000 in loans from the fund.
The state boasts more than 190 businesses, employing about 12,000 people, that have operations using recycled materials, according to the Chelsea Center for Recycling and Economic Development, a STEP-funded affiliate of UMass-Lowell. Yet the state can do more to "ensure that there is enough in-state processing and manufacturing capacity for recyclables collected in Massachusetts," according to Scott Cassel, EOEA's director of waste policy.
A new program to boost the state's capacity is the Recycling Industries Reimbursement Credit (RIRC) Program, which was spearheaded by Massachusetts Senate Ways and Means Committee Chairman Stanley Rosenberg. The RIRC Program is designed to stimulate new approaches to reusing certain recyclables, such as electronic products, tires, glass, and plastics, that are recycled in large, reliable quantities but suffer from weak demand. Under the RIRC Program, innovative processors of these recycled materials will receive credits in the form of subsidies for their purchases of recyclables and reimbursements for capital improvements in their production processes.
Recycling in Massachusetts would fail without adequate markets for the end products that are made from recyclables, and the state has been moving aggressively on that front as well. According to Coxe, state agencies will spend $35 million this year on products with recycled content. In addition, the 237 communities that are eligible for MRIP payments have developed "buy-recycled" programs as part of their FY 1998 agreements with the state.
For FY 1998, EOEA funded the Chelsea Center at a level of $625,000 to assist the Commonwealth in its efforts to promote the purchase of recycled materials by Massachusetts companies. One of the Center's key initiatives for FY 1998 is the development of a "Strategic Plan to Promote the Use of Recycled Materials" (see page 6 of this issue).
In addition to developing the strategic plan, the Chelsea Center has earmarked funds for a variety of ongoing projects, including direct assistance to Massachusetts companies for the purpose of stimulating increased use of recyclables. This assistance will include the testing of recycled products, feedstocks, and waste materials, as well as help for paper mills in increasing their use of scrap paper and recovered fiber, and assistance for plastics companies in making the transition from virgin to recycled plastics.
To receive additional information on recycling programs in Massachusetts, contact the following organizations and offices:
Amy Perlmutter,
Executive Director
Chelsea Center for Recycling and Economic
Development
180 Second Street
Chelsea, MA 02150
Tel:
617-887-2300
Fax: 617-887-0399
E-mail: amyp@ici.net
Stephen Long, Recycling Market Development
Planner
Bureau of Waste Prevention
Massachusetts DEP
One Winter Street
Boston, MA 02108-4747
Tel: 617-292-5734
Fax: 617-292-5778
E-mail: Stephen.Long@state.ma.us
David Lutes, Environmental Technologies Industry
Specialist
Office of Business Development
Massachusetts Department of Economic
Development
One Ashburton Place, 21st Floor
Boston, MA 02108
Tel: 617-727-3206
Fax: 617-727-8797
E-mail: David.Lutes@state.ma.us
Lauren Sharfman, Executive Director
WasteCap of Massachusetts
376 Boylston Street
Boston, MA 02116
Tel: 617-236-7715
Fax: 617-236-7141
E-mail: buyrecycle@aol.com
Global Recycling Technologies, Inc. operates the only state-licensed commercial mercury-reclamation facility in Massachusetts. The facility, which is located in Stoughton, recycles about one million mercury lamps a month, as well as a wide range of mercury-containing devices, batteries, and other wastes.
Global uses a proprietary technology to "demanufacture" mercury-containing lamps, according to Barry Jordan, Global's national accounts manager. The lamps are first separated into components, and the components are then cleaned to remove a mercury-containing powder, from which the mercury is distilled. All of the lamps' materials--aluminum, calcium phosphate, glass, and mercury--are recovered at the Stoughton facility and resold.
Last year, the state's Operational Services Division (OSD) awarded Global a statewide contract to collect and recycle elemental mercury, mercury-containing devices, and other nonmercury waste materials, including old electronic equipment. The OSD contract specifies that state agencies, political subdivisions, and certain contractors who store mercury-containing devices on public property can arrange for Global to collect their mercury-containing wastes at prices set in the contract.
During the second half of 1997, Global collected and reclaimed about 47,000 mercury lamps and 4,000 pounds of batteries, as well as 60 pounds of elemental mercury and 20 pounds of mercury-contaminated manufactured articles, under the OSD contract.
In March, Global received the Blue Chip Enterprise Award, which is given annually by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Mass Mutual, and Nation's Business magazine. The award recognizes small businesses that have "met extraordinary challenges and emerged stronger."
Since its founding in 1992, Global has grown from two to more than 60 employees, and now reclaims mercury-containing wastes and other materials from more than 1,000 business and government customers throughout North America. In February, Global participated in a STEP technology commercialization workshop to assist the company in bringing to market an engine filter-cleaning and recycling technology.
The Chelsea Center for Recycling and Economic Development at UMass-Lowell has awarded a contract for about $120,000 to Dorn and Associates in Apex, North Carolina, for the development of a strategic plan to promote the use of recyclable materials in Massachusetts. The strategic plan will outline practical approaches to help Massachusetts reach its goal of recycling 46 percent of municipal solid waste statewide by the year 2000. The plan will recommend state policies and programs to achieve the following objectives: 1) increase the capacity of existing Massachusetts companies to process or use recycled materials; 2) target and attract to the state those new businesses that offer recycling technologies or use recycled materials; and 3) direct state-sponsored research and technical assistance to support recycling activities throughout the Commonwealth.
Dorn will evaluate the supply and demand statewide for recyclable glass, metal, paper, plastic, organic compounds, textiles, tires, and wood through the year 2001. In particular, the company will study the various factors that determine the demand for recycled materials in Massachusetts, and assess the impact of existing state and local programs on such demand. Based on this information, Dorn will identify gaps between the supply and demand of specific recyclable materials in Massachusetts, as well as ob-stacles to the state's recycling efforts. The strategic plan will recommend approaches for overcoming the existing market barriers, creating new local markets for materials that are already being recycled, and encouraging the collection and use of materials not currently recycled.
Under the terms of the contract, Dorn will complete a draft report on the strategic plan during the spring, with the final plan due in the fall. The draft report, which will be presented to the Massachusetts legislature, will recommend whether any new legislation is needed to further promote recycling in the state. For further information, contact: Amy Perlmutter, Chelsea Center for Recycling and Economic Development, Tel: 617-887-2300.
The Clinton Administration's Brownfields National Partnership has designated Lowell as a Brown-fields Showcase Community and announced that it will provide $2.8 million in federal funds to help support brownfields redevelopment there. The 17 federal government agencies that are members of the partnership have agreed to offer financial and technical assistance to Lowell and another 15 showcase communities around the country. Lowell was chosen as a showcase community, in part, because of its ongoing effort to redevelop brown-fields sites. Although the city has nearly no vacant land available for development, it has a substantial number of brownfield sites.
The city and a consortium of local banks have worked together to garner more than $100 million in brownfields funding from various sources. As part of this effort, Lowell has partnered with federal, state, and local agencies to redevelop the North Canal brownfields area, which is now home to a $30-million sports arena and a $12-million baseball stadium. The city has also targeted 17 industrial properties for further environmental assessment and possible redevelopment, including a 24-acre site that could ultimately provide nearly 2,500 private and university-related jobs.
The Brownfields National Partnership has designated two other showcase communities in New England: the state of Rhode Island, which is focusing on development along the Woonasquatucket River; and Stamford, Connecticut, which plans to build a sports arena in a brownfields area there. For further information, contact: Regional Brownfields Team, EPA Region 1, Tel: 617-573-9681.
The Toxics Use Reduction Institute (TURI) at UMass-Lowell will provide a total of $60,000 in Fiscal Year 1998 to support four projects under its Cleaner Technology Demonstration Sites and Industry Matching Grants Program. The program is designed to help companies test and demonstrate innovative, cleaner technologies, and give them the opportunity to showcase these technologies. This year, TURI chose the following Massachusetts companies for the program: Acushnet Rubber Co. (New Bedford); ASE Americas, Inc. (North Billerica); Lab Medical Engineering & Manufacturing, Inc. (North Billerica); and M/A-COM, Inc. (Lowell). With support from TURI, the four firms will test technologies at their plants, and will host a series of site visits and demonstrations during the late spring and summer. Visitors to the facilities will have the opportunity to learn more about new toxics use reduction technologies, and their associated economic, environmental, health, and safety benefits.
Under the program, Acushnet Rubber will serve as an ISO 14000 demonstration site. Acushnet was the first Massachusetts company certified as meeting the ISO 14000 standards, a comprehensive set of environmental quality management standards. ASE Americas will demonstrate a machine developed by Bright Technology (Cambridge) for reducing the generation of fluoride ions during the manufacture of photovoltaic (light-to-electricity) products. Lab Medical Engineering will showcase its plasma-based technology for the production of stainless steel instruments used in medical and surgical applications, and M/A-COM will demonstrate a low-temperature powder coating process in the manufacture of electronics components, as well as a number of other toxics use reduction technologies that the company has developed. For further information on these projects, contact: Karen Thomas, TURI, Tel: 978-934-3143.
STEP, the University of Massachusetts, and EPA Region 1 are jointly sponsoring a project to identify and help companies commercialize so-called "captured technologies"--technologies that firms have developed for their own use but have not made available commercially. The initiative, called the Innovative Pollution-Prevention Technologies Project, is focusing on manufacturing technologies that increase energy efficiency or reduce the use of toxic substances and the generation of wastes. In the first phase of the project, which will be completed this summer, Professor Betty Diener at UMass-Boston's College of Management and Tim Greiner of Greiner Environmental in Gloucester are investigating whether any companies in New England have developed captured pollution-prevention technologies that have the potential for broader commercial use.
Companies interested in commercializing a captured technology will have the opportunity to participate in the second phase of the project, which will involve a detailed evaluation of the technology. Diener and Greiner will work through STEP with the companies to identify potential barriers to commercialization. Such barriers might include the lack of a technology transfer program within the firm, or the company's belief that commercializing its technology might divert the firm away from its core business or might generate too little revenue to justify the effort. To address these concerns, the project will assess the cost, performance, and market potential of the technology. The project will also offer legal assistance to companies that are interested in licensing their captured technologies to other firms. According to UMass-Boston's Diener, companies with captured technologies could develop new sources of revenue by licensing their technologies, while other firms could use the technologies to prevent pollution or improve energy efficiency. For further information, contact: Betty Diener, UMass-Boston, Tel: 617-287-7736.
EPA and the six New England states have signed a memorandum of agreement (MOA) whereby the parties will exchange cost and performance information about innovative cleanup technologies. The goal of the MOA is to streamline the process of implementing these technologies at small, non-Superfund sites throughout New England by eliminating the need to generate this data on a site-by-site basis. "The New England states are rife with promising new technologies for assessing and cleaning up contaminated sites, but it's difficult for state agencies to use these technologies, because they don't have the staff and resources to review them to make sure they work," said EPA Region 1 Administrator John DeVillars. "This agreement will make it easier for these technologies to get into the marketplace," he noted.
Under the MOA, the Northeast Waste Management Officials Association will establish a Waste Site Cleanup Workgroup to serve as a clearinghouse committee for collecting information about innovative cleanup technologies and disseminating that information. The Cleanup Workgroup will organize conferences and workshops to review the cost and performance data for new technologies, and to develop approaches for removing the barriers to commercializing the technologies. In addition, the workgroup will organize pilot projects for demonstrating new cleanup technologies.
Micromag Corp. (Wayland) is in the process of concluding a pilot demonstration of its CoMag technology for removing contaminants from wastewater at the Easterly Wastewater Treatment Plant in Marlborough. Preliminary data from the 30-gallon-per-minute pilot demonstration, which was started last fall, indicates that the CoMag technology was successful in addressing a phosphorous problem at the Marlborough facility, achieving removal rates of up to 99 percent, according to Micromag Vice President Peter Marston. The CoMag technology has also proven effective in reducing turbidity and removing suspended solids and fecal coliform bacteria, Marston noted.
The CoMag technology, which was originally developed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology by Marston and several colleagues, can remove many kinds of contaminants at very high rates and at low costs, according to Marston. The technology involves the addition of magnetite powder to the wastewater stream during the flocculation phase. The magnetite serves as a magnetic "seed" that binds to the contaminants in the wastewater. A high-throughput, wide-mesh magnetized filter then removes the magnetized floc and the contaminants from the wastewater stream. Marston emphasized that, while the CoMag technology has not yet been pilot-tested on heavy metals and microorganisms such as crypto-sporidium and giardia, it can handle those contaminants.
Once the Marlborough pilot project is completed, Micromag will be ready to take the technology to a commercial level. "We have plans for a 500,000-gallon-per-day demonstration plant--big enough for many towns around Massachusetts," Marston noted. For further infor-mation contact: Peter Marston, Micromag, Tel: 617-253-5722.
As part of its efforts to help innovative environmental technology companies commercialize their products, STEP recently organized a workshop to showcase Ion Signature Technology's (IST's) patented Ion Fingerprint Detection (IFD) software for the Massachusetts DEP's Laboratory Advisory Committee and the state's certified laboratories. The workshop, which was held at the UMass Medical Center in Worcester, featured presentations by IST Chairman Al Robbat, Jr., and Oscar Pancorbo, director of DEP's William X. Wall Experiment Station in Lawrence. Robbat demonstrated the IFD software for the workshop attendees and presented a case study involving the use of the IFD technology to analyze samples collected at a contaminated site. Pancorbo described a study that the Wall Station conducted to compare the performance of the IFD program with that of a competing product, Hewlett Packard's EnviroQuant software. According to Pancorbo, the Wall Station determined that IFD had "clear advantages" over EnviroQuant in terms of speed of analysis and ability to identify target compounds in highly contaminated samples.
In related news, IST recently forged a channel partnership agreement with LINC Quantum Analytics, Inc. (Foster City, California)--the largest renter and lessor of analytical instrumentation. Under the agreement, LINC Quantum will use its U.S. and European sales force to market the IFD software. For further information, contact: Al Robbat, IST, Tel: 617-876-0333.
SolmeteX, Inc. (Billerica) recently entered into an agreement with Beckman Coulter, Inc. (Brea, California)--a company with annual sales of over $2 billion--under which SolmeteX will be the exclusive supplier of wastewater treatment equipment for Beckman's clinical chemistry analyzers during the next 5 years. About 130,000 Beckman clinical chemistry analyzers are installed at hospitals and clinical testing facilities worldwide. These units, which can complete up to 2,000 chemical analyses per day, use reagants containing toxic metals and generate metal-contaminated wastewater. In evaluating different waste treatment equipment, Beckman found that SolmeteX's systems provide a cost-effective means for removing toxic metals at the source, according to Jim Cannon, SolmeteX's executive vice president. SolmeteX systems use proprietary adsorbents to remove mercury and other metals from wastewater much faster than conventional systems, such as ion-exchange resins and carbon adsorbents. The high efficiency of SolmeteX's adsorbent technology also makes its products smaller and less costly than competing systems.
Beckman plans to market SolmeteX treatment systems with its new clinical analyzer units, and will also offer to retrofit existing analyzer units with SolmeteX treatment systems. Cannon estimates that, as a result of the deal, sales of SolmeteX waste treatment systems to Beckman customers could total $10 million during the next 2.5 years. For further information, contact: Jim Cannon, SolmeteX, Tel: 978-262-9890.
Startup companies participating in the STEP program received nearly four dollars in outside financing for every dollar that STEP devoted to assisting those companies in 1997, according to the 1997 STEP Annual Report, which is now available from the Environmental Business and Technology Center at UMass- Boston. Likewise, manufacturing companies that received STEP assistance last year matched STEP's contributions dollar-for-dollar. In this way, according to the Annual Report, "the STEP program has succeeded in using state resources to attract additional private support for commercializing technologies."
Almost 100 companies received some type of assistance from STEP during 1997 in either developing or deploying innovative environmental technologies. Four of the companies that received STEP assistance in 1997--Environmental Management Technologies, Inc. (Milton); Erickson Materials, Inc. (Woburn); Ion Signature Technology, Inc. (Cambridge); and SolmeteX, Inc. (Billerica)--are profiled in the Annual Report. In addition, the Annual Report describes the recent STEP-related activities of the three STEP partners: the Massachusetts Executive Office of Environmental Affairs, the Massachusetts Department of Economic Development, and the University of Massachusetts. For a copy of the STEP Annual Report, at no cost, contact: William Brah, Environmental Business and Technology Center, UMass-Boston, Tel: 617-287-7723.