The survey, which was conducted under the auspices of the University of Tennessee’s Waste Management Research and Education Institute (WMREI), polled 811 heads of households. It reveals that Tennesseans overwhelmingly support recycling. In fact, 90 percent of the respondents said that recycling is either very important or somewhat important. In addition, nearly 70 percent of Tennessee households indicated that they participate in recycling efforts.

The survey, which evaluated the public’s solid-waste attitudes, knowledge, and behaviors, shows that recycling habits in Tennessee have significantly changed since 1989, when a similar poll was taken. In 1989, only 40 percent of Tennesseans replied affirmatively when asked whether they were separating household waste for later recycling. In June of 1997, 67 percent responded affirmatively to the question "Does your household recycle?"

The survey also exposed weaknesses in Tennesseans’ solid-waste-disposal habits. Only 52 percent of the respondents said that they separate household hazardous waste from the rest of their trash. Household hazardous waste includes such items as dead batteries, motor oil, cleaning products, and paint thinner. Furthermore, less than half of the state’s residents compost yard waste and kitchen scraps.

The distance to a recycling center seems to play a role in recycling decisions. Those living close to a recycling center, or having curbside pickup, participated at significantly higher rates than those who live farther away.

WMREI researchers Rosalyn McKeown-Ice and Catherine Wilt led the effort. McKeown-Ice and Wilt are co-directors of the Tennessee Solid Waste Education Project (TN-SWEP). TN-SWEP’s primary goal involves imparting the concepts of waste management, pollution prevention, and environmental protection to the state’s K-12 student population.

Recycling is important in the context of Tennessee’s Solid Waste Management Act of 1991, which mandated a 25-percent waste-reduction goal for 1995. According to the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation, Tennesseans have yet to reach that goal. In fact, statewide waste-reduction rates were 20 percent in 1995 and 22 percent in 1996.

"Recycling is a vital component of waste reduction in the state," says Wilt, who was recently elected president of the National Recycling Coalition, the nation’s leading promoter of recycling. "In fact, recycling offers Tennesseans greater potential for reducing burdens on landfills than any other aspect of solid-waste management."

McKeown-Ice and Wilt claim that, beyond providing a glimpse at Tennesseans’ waste-management practices, the data may also prove useful to researchers and educators who seek to improve the state’s waste-management performance.

"We have been working in solid-waste research and education for a long time, and it’s satisfying to finally be able to see some numbers beside the bits and pieces of anecdotal evidence we’ve gathered over the years," McKeown-Ice says.

"With any educational project, one of the first things you do is to find out what your audience knows and how they behave, and then you teach them what they don’t know," she says. "We lacked a firm grasp of where most Tennesseans stood on this theme. We didn’t know what their knowledge base was or what their behaviors were when it came to solid-waste disposal."

McKeown-Ice believes that the survey indicates that the state’s solid-waste educators may need to shift their emphasis from education about recycling to education about source reduction or the proper disposal of household hazardous wastes.

"To this point we’ve realized great gains from our efforts to educate people about recycling," says McKeown-Ice. "But I’m not sure we can achieve significant additional gains in recycling participation. However, if we start to focus our efforts on other solid-waste-disposal areas, like source reduction, we could make real progress in reaching solid-waste goals."

The survey was conducted using a computer-assisted telephone interviewing system. Respondents were chosen by random-digit dialing. The sample has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points. The current survey complements another WMREI research effort underway to assess the successes, failures, and costs of municipal recycling programs (see "WMREI Charts Recycling Trends," InSites, Summer 1997). l

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A Bent for Quality

UT researchers help ensure that cleanup of the Oak Ridge Reservation is fast, thorough, and effective.

by Elise LeQuire

The University of Tennessee (UT) has joined a private-industry team charged with cleaning up the Oak Ridge Reservation (ORR) in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. The Jacobs Environmental Management (EM) Team, a primary contractor for the Environmental Restoration (ER) project, has been working under contract to the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) since 1993. The project seeks to assist in the cleanup of the 35,000-acre reservation, where decades of research, production, and testing of nuclear weapons have left a legacy of toxic contamination.

This is the first time a partner outside the private sector has been involved in the project, says Sheila Webster, director of the Technology Research and Development Program (TRDP), a subunit of UT’s Energy, Environment, and Resources Center (EERC). Webster administers UT’s contract with the Jacobs team.

One of the team’s tasks is to serve as watchdog over contractors who conduct laboratory tests for hazardous and radioactive materials at the ORR. "The team offers field services and engineering expertise to find the fastest, cleanest ways to remediate contaminated sites," says team member Kathleen Liddle, a UT research associate and performance evaluation (PE) laboratory coordinator who works with the Jacobs EM Team.

Environmental remediation poses a certain amount of health and safety risk to the public, and there is little room for error. To ensure that the laboratories are doing their work efficiently and accurately, the EM Team performs quality-control testing on the work of these independent contractors. "We have to make sure the labs are doing a good job," Liddle says. "That entails monitoring the amount of time a laboratory under contract to DOE takes to perform an analysis, as well as making sure the samples are accurately tested."

One way the team checks for accuracy is to perform a double-blind test. Researchers gather field samples of soil, surface water, and groundwater from the reservation and then analyze them for characteristic materials such as heavy metals and radiological contaminants.

Next, in the laboratory, researchers spike some of the samples with a known contaminant, says Melanie Underwood, a UT chemist who works with the Jacobs EM Team.

The EM Team then ships the samples to 13 labs around the country in identical containers. "Our samples are incognito. The labs just think they are getting a normal sample," Underwood says.

The Jacobs EM Team is operating under a five-year, $92-million contract to help in the second phase of the remediation project. The first step was investigative in nature and involved collecting the data on contaminated sites. The second phase involves a feasibility study to determine the best way to proceed in cleaning up the ORR.

Nine full-time UT researchers under the direction of the EERC’S TRDP are associated with the Jacobs team. Apart from straightforward analytical work, the team cooperates with the Oak Ridge community in efforts to improve communication, says the EERC’s Melinda Basler, training coordinator for the team.

DOE established the Office of Environmental Management in 1989 to address cleanup of its facilities nationwide and in Puerto Rico. Earlier DOE efforts at restoration had left local residents frustrated by the slow pace of remediation efforts. Operations were often fragmented and inefficient, and remediation did not appear to be a high priority.

The remediation project includes the ORR’s three main sites: the Y-12 plant, the nation’s first uranium enrichment site; the K-25 site, formerly a gaseous diffusion plant and now involved in environmental restoration; and the research and development facilities of Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

The third phase of cleanup operations targets specific sites for cleanup. "The project will be ongoing for the next five to 20 years," says David Carden, DOE task manager for the PE laboratory.

"We have a lot left to do."

Partnerships between the federal government, private contractors, and local residents are crucial to the remediation process, proving the old adage that many hands make the labor light. l

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Critters on a Chip

by Laurie Varma

Researchers at the University of Tennessee Center for Environmental Biotechnology (CEB) and Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) are shedding some light on the environmental technology scene with the world’s first glowing pollution-supersleuth computer chip. They’ve combined bioluminescent microbes engineered to glow in the presence of contaminants and other target substances with a tiny computer chip. CEB is an affiliate of the Waste Management Research and Education Institute. ORNL is managed by Lockheed Martin Energy Research Corporation for the U.S. Department of Energy.

Dubbed "Critters on a Chip," the new device consists of living, light-producing sensors and a computer chip small enough to fit on the end of a matchstick. The chip measures 2 millimeters by 2 millimeters and is half a millimeter thick.

"The microbes are directly mounted on the chip," says Steve Ripp, a postdoctoral researcher with CEB who is involved in the project. A coating applied before the microbes are mounted will protect the computer chip’s circuits.

The microbes, known by the scientific name Pseudomonas fluorescens, were developed in the late 1980s and first tested in the mid-1990s for use in breaking down hazardous waste. The visible blue-green light told researchers that contaminants were there and that the microbes were doing their job.

"Microbes can be individually engineered to detect many things. We are using them to detect substances both naturally occurring and manmade that are judged to be environmental contaminants," says Mike Simpson, a researcher with ORNL’s Instrumentation and Controls Division who developed the chip used for the new device.

Until the researchers joined forces, CEB’s microbes were injected into the soil, where they would bioluminesce in the presence of the chemicals they were engineered to detect. Mounting the microbes on a computer chip allows researchers to plant the sensor anywhere from on the rudder of a helicopter to the dorsal fin of a fish and walk away. Once the chips are planted, the user is free to monitor the sensors remotely; visiting the site to check on whether target substances are present becomes unnecessary. Each chip creates a signal that can be picked up by a receiver and then transmitted to an office PC.

"This is an exciting aspect of the project," says CEB Director Gary Sayler. "Having to link microbes to monitoring equipment made environmental use in the field somewhat limited. Eventually we will be able to sit at a desk and monitor the sensor, and we will get fully processed information.

"The new technology will be immediately usable for detection of chemical pollutants, such as hydrocarbons from spills and poor waste-management practices," Sayler says.

CEB believes the chip technology has broad application and can be particularly useful for agriculture. Farmers using the chip will be able to detect pesticide residues and know when to add pesticides to their crop fields, rather than applying them at regular intervals. The chip also will help them monitor soil composition and nutrients, so they’ll know which crops to fertilize. "Also, by detecting pesticides in both soil and water, we expect to help ward off potential public health threats," says Sayler.

In addition to agricultural use, CEB and ORNL expect their new device to be used in finding oil in the environment, detecting explosives, and sensing substances and chemical concentrations that may indicate industrial process failures. For example, chemical manufacturers could use the chips to determine when a solution has become corrupted, instead of relying on color, temperature, or pressure inside the vat.

In the future, the chip may also significantly decrease the time it takes physicians to find the right medication to treat patients suffering from infectious diseases because numerous drugs can be tested simultaneously on one bacterial culture.

Labs will be able to test the effectiveness of drugs by watching for the light. If light is detected, the bacterial strain is alive and resistant; if there’s no light, the drug has killed the strain and thus will be therapeutic for the patient.

"Many of the uses we envision will benefit the entire population," says Sayler.

The collaboration between researchers at CEB and ORNL grew out of CEB’s efforts to find the best method for measuring the light their glowing microbes gave off. "CEB was producing light, and ORNL was measuring light," says Simpson, who works on developing small-scale light-sensing equipment. "The microbes had been engineered to bioluminesce with contaminants, but measurement is a hard thing to instrument. ‘Critters on a Chip’ can be used in places other monitors can’t because it is small, low-power, rugged, and wireless." The sensor is expected to replace bulky, expensive, and complicated alternatives.

The researchers are continuing to make their "Critters on a Chip" usable in the real world. Their current work addresses issues like how users will receive the chip’s signals and how far the chips can transmit. "The answers to both of these questions depend on the transmitter power and receiver size you’re willing to use," says Simpson. "So far, transmissions go a reasonable distance, but they can be significantly improved."

Simpson suggests that a farmer might spread chips over a field that has a data-collection apparatus set up in the middle. A pager or receiver inside a tractor could be used to monitor the data collected by the computer chips. "In the future, chip transmissions might even be received over very long distances," he says.

CEB and ORNL are exploring the chip’s shelf life following mass production and how long the chip will work after it’s planted. "We are investigating dehydration as a solution to the shelf-life problem," says Sayler. "We know that freeze-drying helps microbes survive, but it’s never been tried on a computer chip." The chips would be sold freeze-dried, and buyers would rehydrate them before use.

To extend the chip’s working life, the researchers are considering encapsulating nutrients with the microbes. The nutrients would give the microbes something to feed on, keeping them active. "Right now, all we know is that the chips work until the microbes go dormant," says Simpson.

The new technology is expected to be easy to use and accessible to everyone. Replication costs could be very low—about $1 per chip in mass production—and users will be able to throw them away after they’re done. "Critters on a Chip" could usher CEB into billion-dollar commercial markets, if the wide range of industries that could benefit from the new sensor actually use it. "There is no immediate competition for this technology," says Sayler. "And no other technology covers so many applications." l

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U.S.–Swedish Exchange Program

A European master’s candidate lends an international "life-cycle" perspective to UT research.

by Elise LeQuire

A new paint job on the family car may put a major dent in the budget, but it will cost the environment the equivalent of 60,000 miles of automobile emissions. And paint is only one of about 15,000 parts and processes that go into manufacturing an automobile. The family bank account may pay for the paint job, but who should pay the related environmental costs?

According to Michael Kuhndt, the manufacturer should. Kuhndt, a student at Lund University in Sweden, spent this past summer as a graduate research student with the University of Tennessee’s (UT) Center for Clean Products and Clean Technologies (CCPCT).

Until recently, after products were manufactured, environmental responsibility fell on the shoulders of the consumer. Thomas Lindhqvist, Kuhndt’s tutor and the director of education at the International Institute for Industrial Environmental Economics (IIIEE) at Lund University, turned that idea on its head. Lindhqvist formulated the concept of Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR), which came to him as he attended international pollution-prevention conferences in the late 1980s.

The principle charges the manufacturer with the duty of reducing the environmental impact of its products’ use and disposal. (See "A Little Healthy Give and Take," InSites, Fall 1997.) "At these conferences, most people were interested in pollution from factories, while only a handful were interested in pollution associated with the whole product life cycle," Lindhqvist says.

Gary Davis, director of the CCPCT, was among that handful. CCPCT is an affiliate of UT’s Waste Management Research and Education Institute. "I met Thomas in 1989 at a U.N. pollution-prevention conference where we discussed environmental policies that focused on products, such as the concept of EPR," Davis says.

Lindhqvist formally submitted the concept of EPR to the Swedish Ministry of the Environment in two papers in 1990 and 1992. Since then the idea has gained momentum both in Europe and in the United States. Cooperation between the CCPCT and IIIEE, which share closely related missions, has blossomed into an ongoing exchange program. Over the past two years, Davis has periodically visited the IIIEE at Lund University, Sweden, where he teaches a short course in environmental policy and law that combines lectures with student presentations, evaluation, and feedback. On one of these trips, Davis met Kuhndt and was impressed with his work.

Kuhndt is the first European student to visit the CCPCT. He spent the summer working on his masters’ thesis in environmental management and policy. Kuhndt’s visit was funded by the CCPCT.

Kuhndt also worked with CCPCT researchers on a project with Saturn Corporation. The CCPCT is working closely with Saturn on a software program that will help automobile designers bring the environment, including environmental costs, into the design process. The project is funded jointly by Saturn Corporation and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

"The Saturn team is creating a computer tool that will allow automobile manufacturers to look at life-cycle impacts and costs of design choices so they can evaluate alternative materials and processes that reduce environmental impacts while saving costs," says Mary Swanson, a CCPCT research scientist.

For example, the search for lighter, more fuel-efficient cars has led to an increased use of plastics that are difficult or impossible to recycle. In conducting the research for his master’s thesis, Kuhndt determined that aluminum might be a manufacturer’s best choice. The lightweight but sturdy metal can be recycled at the end of the vehicle’s life.

In his thesis, "Towards a Green Automobile: Life-Cycle Management in Europe and the United States," Kuhndt outlines the environmental effects of the automobile throughout its life cycle. His study is intended to help the automobile industry, suppliers, and government choose options that will reduce the negative impacts of a product at each stage of its life.

Under the EPR principle, the manufacturer would accept responsibility for taking back automobiles at the end of their useful lives and recycling many of their components. If the manufacturer accepts this recycling responsibility, Kuhndt says, it may be in the manufacturer’s best interest, and beneficial to the environment, to choose aluminum over plastic because of its superior recyclability.

Kuhndt’s thesis on the green automobile has important implications because of the enormous environmental impact of the automobile. To produce 24 million vehicles yearly, the industry uses some 46 million tons of natural resources, including steel, iron, aluminum, plastic, glass, and paint. The mining of raw materials, the energy demands of manufacturing, and the pollution generated in the process take their toll as well. Then there’s the cost of oil consumption and disposal; emissions of carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, and volatile organic compounds that foul the air; and disposal or recycling of the vehicle at the end of its useful life.

The exchange program between the CCPCT and its counterpart in Sweden, though it has not been formalized, is already yielding results. "The IIIEE is an international program, but Kuhndt’s was the first thesis that was done in the United States," Davis says. "The IIIEE program is the only one in the world where you can get a degree in cleaner production". And the program allows the CCPCT to bring in students trained in cleaner-production policies and processes to work at the center in a mutually beneficial arrangement.

The exchange program gives students the opportunity to expand the environmental debate, to open some doors," Lindhqvist says.

Since its founding in 1985, the IIIEE has expanded into an internationally recognized research and teaching institution. It now offers courses, taught in English, to students from outside Sweden. "This year we graduated about 31 students, including four Americans," Lindhqvist says. According to Swanson, Mary Ann Curran, the initial EPA project officer for the Saturn effort, was one of the international students to study at Lund University.

For more information, contact Gary Davis, CCPCT, University of Tennessee, 311 Conference Center Building, Knoxville, TN 37996-4134, or call 865-974-4251.

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WMREI Researcher Elected to National Post

Catherine Wilt, a senior research associate at the University of Tennessee’s Waste Management Research and Education Institute, was recently elected president of the National Recycling Coalition (NRC).

The NRC, the nation’s largest recycling coalition, boasts more than 4,800 members. Its mission is to foster alliances among business, government, and individuals to maximize recycling efforts and achieve the benefits of resource conservation, solid-waste management, environmental protection, energy conservation, and social and economic development.

As a member of the NRC’s board of directors for the past two years, Wilt has been involved in the Recycling to Build Community project, which places AmeriCorps VISTA volunteers into community-based nonprofit organizations. "We’ve put about 50 VISTA members in low-income communities to increase recycling services and recycling-based job opportunities," Wilt says. VISTA volunteers also serve in leadership roles and provide educational programs to members of low-income communities, both urban and rural, and work to promote sustainable economic development on a local basis.

"I’ve always believed we need to sustain our communities and our environment, and I hope to affect policy within the system," Wilt says.

In April 1997, Wilt represented the NRC at the Presidents’ Summit for America’s Future, held in Philadelphia. At that meeting, President Clinton called for major nonprofit organizations and private corporations to help provide job opportunities for America’s youth.

Wilt’s goals for her one-year tenure as president include strengthening the relationship between national and state recycling organizations and developing the long-term financial stability of the organization.

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Profitable Partnership

Laurie Varma

When the word got out about the new pollution sensors developed by the University of Tennessee’s Center for Environmental Biotechnology (CEB) and Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), a La Jolla, California, company came knocking (see "Critters on a Chip" on this page). ORNL’s Office of Technology Transfer (OTT) answered the door. Designed to encourage partnerships with private industry and academia, OTT helps guide new, cutting-edge technologies to the private sector for commercial application. OTT might do anything from matching up private organizations with ORNL research experts to finding companies to license new technologies.

After IRORI expressed an interest in licensing the new technology, CEB and ORNL agreed to negotiate together and tapped OTT to represent both organizations. OTT leads discussions with IRORI and works with the University of Tennessee Research Corporation to ensure both organizations’ goals are met. CEB and ORNL co-own "Critters on a Chip," and each can individually license the technology to others.

Under the proposed licensing agreement with IRORI, CEB and ORNL retain ownership of their new technology, and the company leases the technology for use in several fields of application. Deals like this one give scientists the rewarding experience of seeing their research applied to real-world problems. Researcher-industry agreements get researchers recognized for their work, as well as the research firms they work for. Meanwhile, companies like IRORI get a competitive leg up: licensing deals allow companies to enhance their technology base and make themselves more lucrative.

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Staff Citings

Publications. EERC Research Associate Ralph Perhac’s article "Comparative Risk Assessment: Where Does the Public Fit in?" will appear in an upcoming issue of Science, Technology, & Human Values. The paper examines different rationales for seeking public participation and the influence of such participation on the process of assessing comparative risks.

Della Martin, PRI research associate, published "Finding the Location of ActiveX Servers" in the November 1997 issue of FoxPro Advisor. The article, which features Martin’s pioneering work, describes how to locate files that will allow a computer user to automate complex tasks and access complicated data from one software program for use in another.

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