At Oakland's Airport, Plenty of Trash and More Recycling

At Oakland's Airport, Plenty of Trash and More
Recycling 
Northgate News, CA
 
February 17, 2004 


As manager of land operations at Oakland International
Airport, Ralph Hill makes sure that the facility runs
smoothly. A neatly dressed man, Hill walks through the
terminals greeting and laughing with employees,
calling almost everyone by first name. 

As a college student Hill entered the airline industry
in 1969 working a summer job at Western Airlines in
Denver. After 34 years working at airports, his
knowledge of various aspects of airport operations
helps him make things click in Oakland.

"It's like a little city out here," Hill said one
morning in early November. 

In that city Hill likens himself to the city manager,
overseeing numerous employees and complex processes
each day. He knows how garbage collection, just one of
the airport's complex systems, works. And he's trying
to make the system cheaper and more efficient.

There are two main parts to the waste stream at
Oakland's airport: waste generated by passengers and
restaurants inside the airport and the waste generated
by these passengers on planes.

Trash collected in the airport's terminals and
administrative offices is mixed with trash from the
airport's restaurants. CA One, a privately held
company based in Buffalo, N.Y., manages the airport's
restaurants. The company combines its waste with the
airport's and the two entities split the costs of
waste removal and recycling. In the waste generated by
the restaurants and in the terminals, food is the
largest component.

"Your food type waste is where it's at. I'd say that
50 percent would be a conservative figure," Hill said.
"The more food we get out of the waste stream, it
lowers our cost." 

Because recycling food waste is cheaper than throwing
it away, CA One and the airport are planning to
implement new food recycling measures. Each of the
company's restaurants will receive a plastic bin for
collecting food scraps. CA One will pay to have food
waste removed and composted. The program will collect
scraps generated in preparation but not left over from
customers' meals. It should be in place by the end of
the year, CA One manager Rockland Saunders said.

The food-recycling program was implemented following
the airport's installation of recyclables collection
containers for newspapers and plastic bottles in two
terminals in May of 2002. Hill is now trying to make
trash collection for airlines more efficient. While
the airport and restaurant's trash is mixed and stored
in separate spots outside the facility's terminals,
airline garbage is stored elsewhere. And the results
are not pretty.

Twelve green metal trash containers, some of them
missing a wheel or two, are strewn haphazardly along
one side of a narrow strip of pavement that leads onto
the airport's tarmac. Each airline has one or two of
these bins, and they pay Waste Management to haul
trash from them on a set schedule regardless of how
full they are. Some of these VW-Bug-sized bins are
labeled with an airline's name, but this doesn't stop
other airlines from using them when their own bins
fill up, Hill said.

On the other side of this paved strip lies a large
trash compactor, its new gray paint sparkling in the
sun. Though it has not yet been used, Hill said the
new compactor will cut the airlines' waste disposal
costs and reduce the volume of garbage the airport
sends to landfills. The idea is that airlines will
combine their wastes for compacting. A computer will
track how much each airline is discarding. When the
compactor gets close to being filled, Waste Management
will be called to empty it. The company will bill the
airport, which will then charge the airlines based on
how much they threw out. By working on an economy of
scale, Hill said disposal costs will go down.

As Hill drove along the strip onto the tarmac, he
pointed to the old green bins on his left and the new
compactor on his right. These two set-ups, he said,
represented the past and the future of garbage and
recycling at the airport. 

The compactor, expected to be operational by the end
of the year, will be used for crushing recyclable
paper and cardboard. Another one will soon be added
for crushing garbage headed to the Altamont Landfill.
Hill said it is the machine's ability to reduce waste
disposal costs that interested the airlines in signing
on to the new system. 

"With the new compactor, we will reduce the trash cost
for each airline by 50 percent," he said. "And that is
a conservative figure."


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