Because of the quantity and type of air emissions, wastewater effluent, and hazardous waste that they generate, many plating shops are subject to the federal Clean Air Act and its 1990 Amendments, the Clean Water Act, and/or the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act. In addition, most shops are subject to Massachusetts statutes and regulations regarding the release, discharge or off-site transfer of pollutants or wastes. Federal and Massachusetts environmental laws and regulations that apply to metal plating shops are discussed more fully in Chapter 1.

IV. CLEANER PRODUCTION TECHNOLOGIES

A. Overview

In addition to subjecting a metal plating shop to a myriad of environmental laws and regulations, a shop's disposal of metals, process bath solutions, and rinse water represent costly process inefficiencies. It is easy to see that a shop loses money when it dumps plating bath solution before it is completely used up, or when a high percentage of the metal it uses is trucked away in hazardous waste sludge. Other less obvious costs associated with such production processes include: permit fees, high water/sewer and electricity bills, and increased expenditures on chemical inputs due to the inefficient use of materials.

Numerous technological modifications or upgrades are available to increase a metal plating shop's efficiency while relieving its regulatory burden. Metal finishers' cleaner production technology options fall into seven broad
categories:

1) improved operating and maintenance procedures;
2) equipment modifications or add-ons;
3) materials reuse;
4) materials recovery;
5) rinsewater recovery or reuse;
6) input substitution; and
7) adoption of new technology.

These seven categories present a wide range of solutions to the problems associated with a job shop's use and release of toxic substances. Determining the suitability of a particular cleaner production technology will take numerous factors into account, including the level of technical expertise in the shop, product quality, customer/supplier relations, and cost. Some shops will be able to explore cleaner production technologies in all seven categories; other shops may be limited to exploring a few types of technology options. OTA can assist manufacturers with looking at an entire plating shop systematically to find the simplest and most appropriate technology options that are compatible with all components of the shop's production process.

Sectors - Metal Finishing