- Benefits
5 Benefits of an On-Site Solvent Recycler
The benefits of solvent recycling are hard to ignore. Here we share just a few ways installing a solvent recycler on-site can help your business.
- The CleanPlanet Team
- August 25, 2020
Table of Contents
If you run a business that uses solvents in your day to day operations, the only logical choice for dealing with your waste solvents is recycling them with an on-site solvent recycler. On-site solvent recyclers have been in use for decades now, but it has become increasingly clear that it is impossible to ignore their many benefits. To run a successful business in our ‘New Normal’ economic climate, where nothing is certain, one must implement practices that foster overall cost reduction. This is where on-site solvent recyclers truly shine. Let’s take a look at the top five benefits of recycling your solvents with an on-site distillation unit.
1. Cheaper
At the end of the day, the most important part about running a business is making money. Your bottom line means everything and one way to ensure you are maximizing your profits is by cutting costs wherever possible. An on-site solvent recycler provides the perfect answer if you are looking to streamline and cut out unnecessary costs from your company.
For one, virgin solvent is very expensive. Why waste valuable capital on purchasing virgin solvent every time you need a new batch? Recycled solvent is much less expensive than virgin solvent, but is also of comparable or better quality, so it just makes sense to bring this processing closer to home. Wasting money on virgin solvent represents value leaking away from your company, for no apparent reason at all.
With an on-site solvent recycler, you also completely cut out shipping costs from the equation. When you purchase virgin solvent, you’re not only paying for the solvent itself, you’re also paying the shipper to have it delivered to you. Why bother? On-site solvent recycling is much simpler in this sense, and can save you money that you have spent on transportation for years before.
With an intelligent and efficient on-site recycler, you likely only have to dedicate a few minutes of time per day, so you also cut down on paid wages that are unnecessary. Whereas before you may have had one or more employees spending many hours on coordinating the delivery and payment of virgin solvent, on-site recycling keeps things quick and simple.
Once you take the plunge into on-site solvent recycling, it will be quickly apparent how much money you were spending on products and services that were simply unnecessary to the successful functioning of your business. Saving this kind of capital will allow you to spend much more time and resources on the things that really matter to the prosperity of your business.
2. Higher Quality
It is becoming much more common to find that many of our everyday household products come from recycled materials. Recycling processes have become so technologically advanced that there is literally no noticeable difference in quality between a product that comes from virgin resources, and one that has been recycled. The same thing can be said for recycled solvents. Solvent recyclers has taken leaps forward in recent years, allowing companies to yield a recycled solvent that is comparable to or of even higher quality than virgin solvent. As we learned above, if it’s much cheaper to recycle solvent on-site, and the quality of the recycled solvent is the same or better, then the choice is an easy one.
When having virgin solvent delivered to you, there is always the worry that the shipper is contaminating the product. Although quality control systems are meant to be put in place and to be followed, we can never fully rely on others to follow through on procedure. Cargo tanks are used for multiple purposes throughout their life, and sometimes contaminants get into the system accidentally and can possibly taint your virgin solvent. Using an impure solvent like this can cause your machinery and equipment to deteriorate over time, resulting in more frequent repairs and replacements, and downtime, which is expensive. It’s also unlikely that you’ll be able to provide a consistent product or service to your customers if you’re never sure of how contaminated the solvent you are using is.
When you recycle your waste solvent with an on-site distillation unit, though, you’re always in control of which solvents come into contact with the equipment. CleanPlanet Chemical’s technicians are continuously monitoring your solvent recyclers in real-time to make sure they are operating at the highest efficiency possible. Another amazing feature of CleanPlanet’s on-site recyclers is their patented VMX Vapor Management technology. This system funnels all exhaust heat and vapor back into the distillation system, greatly reducing any potential loss of heat and solvent. In the end, by recycling solvent with an on-site unit, you are being provided with essentially the same or better solvent, at a much lower cost than virgin solvent.
3. Convenience
As a result of Covid-19, supply chains all around the world have been severely disrupted. All of a sudden, it’s impossible to rely on one’s vendors to deliver on a reliable time scale. Down the line, one vendor after another is unable to procure essential parts and services to keep business moving consistently. Off-site recyclers are also at the woe of supply chains, which is why we are seeing delayed time periods of recycling, delayed shipping, and increased service costs. Keeping the solvent recycling process in-house and on your job site, though, greatly reduces one’s reliance on interrupted supply chains.
Once you have a solvent recycling unit installed on your jobsite, you can recycle solvent whenever you want. CleanPlanet Chemical’s solvent recyclers are also very simple to use, and require only about ten minutes of attention a day. You simply hook up the barrels or totes of waste solvent to the distillation unit and then sit back and let our engineers and technicians monitor the distillation process for you. Their job is to ensure your recycling unit is operating at the highest efficiency, providing you with the highest quality solvent.
CleanPlanet Chemical’s on-site recyclers have also eliminated the traditionally messy and hazardous still bottom discharge process from the equation. Gone are the days of manually removing still bottoms and emptying them into containers. With CleanPlanet Chemical’s solvent recyclers, the still bottom waste is automatically discharged into drums to be easily stored and disposed of. No muss, no fuss!
4. Reduced Liability
If you’re in the business of using solvents, you’re surely aware of the term “cradle to grave liability.” What this means is that you are ultimately responsible for any hazardous wastes you produce from the time they are generated to the time they are finally disposed of. If anything happens to your solvent waste during this extensive time period, whether it is spilled in an accident in the shipping process, or even if it leaks out of tanks that are being stored off-site waiting to be disposed of, your company is 100% liable. This is surely a daunting thought that has caused countless sleepless nights for company execs and managers. With on-site recyclers, the shipping in and out of waste solvent is greatly minimized, thus reducing the chances of something going wrong.
Earlier this year, a company located in Alberta, Canada called Drever Agency Inc., was hit with a fine of $1.25 million under the Canadian Fisheries Act for an unfortunate incident that had taken place in 2017. Over 400 gallons of a solvent called Petrosol had leaked from holding tanks into a nearby river, causing the death of a great number of fish and other wildlife. Even though the solvent was technically out of their hands, Drever Agency Inc. was still held liable.
Not only is such a fine a huge blow to a company’s finances, but being added to the Environmental Offenders Registry tarnishes one’s reputation, which is never good for business. Once you are on this watch list, the EPA and other environmental advocacy groups increase their monitoring of your company, which can result in further hefty fines. The EPA also requires lengthy compliance paperwork to be filled out when shipping and disposing of waste solvents. Time is money, and filling out this type of paperwork is unnecessary if you can simply process the solvent on-site.
By recycling your solvent with an on-site unit, you minimize the amount of shipping that takes place in the process of recycling and disposing of waste, thus, reducing potential liabilities.
5. Waste Reduction
In today’s economic climate, the writing is on the wall: what is good for the health of the planet is good for business. Governments around the world are continually rolling out and increasing carbon taxes in an effort to reduce our environmental impact. What is clear is that environmentally conscious and responsible practices in industry are both rewarded and financially prescient. Taking the steps now to reduce one’s carbon footprint will undoubtedly contribute to the success that businesses see in the future.
As waste generators, it is in any business’ best interests to do their best to reduce waste as much as possible. On-site recycling ensures that you are reducing your production of hazardous waste as much as possible.
One way that on-site recyclers reduce their generation of waste is by operating at very high efficiencies. Today, solvent recyclers are very technologically advanced, and with the careful real-time monitoring that CleanPlanet Chemical’s technicians and engineers provide, you are able to retrieve almost all of your original solvent. The added bonus here is that not only are you getting a great return on your waste solvent, but you are also doing so in an environmentally responsible fashion, with very little waste produced.
By reducing the amount of shipping that takes place in the recycling process, on-site recycling also minimizes the production of greenhouse gases. Trains, trucks, ships and other modes of transportation all produce great amounts of greenhouse gases, which are another form of unnecessary waste that is directly released into the environment. With carbon taxes continuing to rise, companies will have to pay more and more to have their virgin solvent delivered.
As you can see, the world of the future is set up so that reduction of environmental impact and good business go hand in hand. It really is cheaper to be environmentally conscious and to practice waste reduction methods. Other businesses also just like doing business with companies that practice these types of green initiatives, so it really is a no brainer.
It's Just Good Business
Although all five of the benefits of on-site solvent recyclers that we discussed above are important, they all ultimately feed into the fact that it is simply cheaper for a business to recycle on-site. Minimizing the need for shipping, using higher quality solvents, operating a simple and convenient on-site recycler, reducing liability, and reducing waste are all ways that we can decrease our company overheads. By cutting these costs, you contribute to the overall financial success of the company. As we’ve seen over just the past several months, the future of the world is uncertain, and no one really knows what could happen to the global economy going forward. This means that the only prudent choice for dealing with your waste solvents is to recycle them with an on-site solvent recycler.
