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Pollution Prevention (P2) for Photofinishing Laboratories 812921
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Sheets
Opportunities may exist to save a significant amount of money for your
business and simultaneously protect the environment through P2.
What is P2? P2 is the use of materials, processes, or practices that
eliminate or reduce the creation of pollutants or waste at the source. P2
consists of a variety of strategies and techniques that strive to avoid the
production of waste and the subsequent costly and sometimes dangerous waste
management activities. Waste avoidance or reduction may result in increased
facility efficiencies as well as significant savings from lowered waste
management costs, raw materials costs, reduced insurance and worker safety
costs. There is, therefore, the opportunity to simultaneously improve your
bottom line - and protect the environment.
Where can I obtain information? The Business & Environmental Service
Centers have compiled a library of P2 reference materials that may help you
identify and adopt P2 measures appropriate to your business. For local P2
information, call 1-800-GOV-1-STOP. The following publications may be requested
online:
What are the benefits of P2?
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Business Cost Savings: You may realize -
reduced energy costs, operational costs, production costs,
raw materials costs, transportation costs, treatment and
disposal costs, compliance permits, monitoring and
enforcement costs.
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Environmental Protection: Your employees and
patrons will appreciate your leadership in the
implementation of business practices that are economically
viable, sustain natural resources and diversity, and
enhance the quality of life for present and future
generations.
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Regulatory Relief: It is easier to achieve and
maintain compliance once P2 measures have been
implemented.
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Reduced Liability, Exposure, and Health Risk:
Less waste means less liability for environmental problems
at both on-site and off-site treatment, storage and
disposal facilities. Reducing waste also means less
potential risk to human health and safety and reduced
worker exposure to toxic chemicals.
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Reduced Energy Consumption: Energy conservation
and energy use efficiency will reduce costs and the risk
of power outages.
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What new technologies reduce costs and promote P2?
- Source Reduction:1 practices are
applicable to all sizes of photoprocessing operations to minimize
waste generation. They require almost no investment and have proven
effective in many businesses: control inventories of processing
chemicals so they are used before their expiration dates, make up
processing solutions only in quantities needed to meet realistic
processing volumes, use floating lids or balls on developer solution
tanks to prevent loss of potency through oxidation or evaporation, and
improve quality control for all processes to prevent unnecessary
discharges.
- Plumbingless Minilabs:1 use a proprietary
chemical stabilizer in place of wash water. While conventional
minilabs discharge 20-25 gallons of effluent per roll of film
processed, this type of lab discharges less than 0.1 gallon of
effluent per roll. However, even though the volume of effluent is
greatly reduced, the concentrations of contaminants are much higher
than for conventional minilabs.
- Color Developer Reuse:1 reduces replenisher
purchases by about 50 percent. Color developers that can be
regenerated are available. One regeneration process requires an
ion-exchange unit to remove the excess development by-products from
the developer overflow. Another process accomplishes the same
objective without ion exchange, using a different developer
solution.
- Recycle Rinse Water:1 to reduce waste
disposal costs. Rinse water waste streams are the highest volumes of
waste from photoprocessors. This effluent consists primarily of
water with low concentrations of chemicals from the carry-over of
the processing solutions. Spent rinse water can be treated to
restore purity and recycled for rinsing.
- Silver Recovery:1 is economical when high
volumes of rinse water are used even though the amount of silver in
rinse water is only a small fraction of that in the fixer or bleach
fix solutions. The most common methods of silver recovery from the
fixer and bleach fix processing solutions are metal replacement,
electrolytic recovery, and chemical precipitation.
Why is P2 a good idea for businesses? Here is an annual cost comparison
of solvent versus aqueous cleaning units:
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Materials Used |
Recoverable Silver (oz./month) |
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Black/White Film Processing |
2.0 |
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Black/White Print |
0.9 |
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Color Film Processing |
33.2 |
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Color Print Processing |
75.4 |
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Total Recoverable Silver |
111.5 |
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Actual Silver Recovered* |
96 |
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Amount Saved from Silver Recycling** |
$576/month |
Source: USEPA, 1991
* Unrecovered silver, 15.5 ounces per month, is assumed to be lost in wash
water, which is not treated.
** Silver price is based on $6.00 per Troy ounce.
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