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enton Foundry held its 25th annual company picnic on Saturday, August 14th at Knoebels Grove. It was a prefect summer day with lots of sun and fun. We had a nice turnout, with 350 attending. There were lots of great prizes, many of which were donated. We enjoyed each others company, good food, games and rides. It was nice to be back at the park, since we were unable to have our picnic in 2020 due to the pandemic. A big thank you to all that participated in making this event possible.

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oundries and recycling have gone hand in hand for over a hundred years. Benton takes scrap from steel punching operations, old railroad rail, and old automotive castings at approximately 10,000 tons per year. The copper we use for alloying is recycled copper wire similar to our tin. The carbon we use in the furnaces are byproducts of refineries in the form of petroleum coke. The following table shows a 5-year average of what Benton Foundry generates:

Looking at this from another perspective, over 99% of our waste materials are recycled.

Hazardous Waste
Hazardous waste is controlled tightly and specifically by (mostly federal) law. Nearly all of the hazardous waste we have generated over the years is directly related to paint. Waste paint, rags from cleaning up paint, paint chips from cleaning painting tables, and aerosol cans make up our typical hazardous waste collection. The fact that we have ended our onsite paint operations and spent aerosol cans have been reclassified as universal waste by federal law means our hazardous waste numbers will fall even further in the years to come. Our hazardous waste is currently handled by Safety-Kleen and is fuel blended for use in cement kilns when applicable or incinerated when necessary. This waste stream has a very detailed set of paperwork that follows it from cradle to grave.

Landfill Disposal
Less than one percent of our “waste” is bound for true landfill disposal. This material is almost exclusively the stuff in the dumpsters out back and is made up of cafeteria and office waste, packaging from raw materials, and spent filters – all under the category of plant trash. This material is taken by Shaffer’s Disposal to Lycoming County Landfill.

Combined Reuse
The remaining materials for which we no longer have a use are all reused in some manner. This is where the conversation gets more complex as a tremendous effort has gone into finding a beneficial reuse for everything we possibly can over the years. Also, in case you were wondering, internal recycling of cast iron pieces is not included in this list. We call this the “dream machine” and it generates several truck loads a year of usable iron.

Let us first take a look at true recycling operations.
Some things are easy to conceptualize like scrap steel from equipment repairs/maintenance, empty cans from the pattern shop, structural steel from building demolitions – all of these get bulked together and are taken by a scrap dealer to their scrap yard for proper sorting and handling. The 5-year average for this type of material exceeds 70 tons annually for which BFI is paid for recycling.
Additionally, items like plastic/glass bottles, corrugated cardboard, aluminum cans, and other recyclable plastics are taken by Shaffer’s Disposal to Lycoming County Resource Management who operate a large single-stream recycling outfit that is quite high-tech if you ever get the chance to see it. This comes to roughly 25 tons per year for these types of materials.

Two of the more unique recycling operations in which we participate address spent pallets/crates and shredded paper. As long as the scrap wood is not painted, we are allowed to give it away to foundry members or other people to burn in wood stoves. We manage to distribute about 26 tons per year of good hardwood in this manner. Additionally, those bags of shredded paper you sometimes see by the production office go to a local farmer to use as biodegradable animal bedding. We see a surprising 6 tons of material used this way each year. These materials would be easier to landfill, but it is more important to us to limit our landfill impact to the extent feasible. This material makes some cows very happy.

We have partnered with Wayne Twp. Landfill, who use our material as “alternative daily cover” at their landfill. Since our material is heavy and spreads so nicely it makes a perfect material to cover up everyone else’s trash in the landfill. Not only does it prevent other paper, plastic, etc. from blowing away, it also serves as a buffer material that mitigates the effects of acid rain and also conditions landfill leachate water so it is easier for the landfill to manage. These materials come out to a whopping 6600 tons per year. Without our material, the landfill would have to continuously excavate fresh soil to use for cover – not an easy job to do when the ground is frozen.

While the above items comprise the majority of materials by weight, they barely scrape the surface of our recycling complexity. They say the devil is in the details – here is some of the devil we manage:

State and federal law prevent us from landfilling any of the following materials so recycling options make the most sense. We use Safety-Kleen to recycle fluorescent and HID lamps along with parts washer solvent, waste oil, oily solids (spill cleanups), and electronic scrap. Batteries (alkaline, nickel-based, and lithium-based) are sent to a battery recycling firm called Battery Solutions.

As should be clear by now, getting rid of something in a place like this is not nearly as simple as tossing it in the trash to be handled like at your home. As always, if you are looking for more information on how something should be treated when no longer useful or what happens to certain items when they leave our site, you can ask Kevin Trychta.

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enton Foundry recently supported Patrick Lobos in his Eagle Scout project at his local fire company. Patrick is the son of our Quality Engineer Matt Lobos and his wife Caroline. Patrick is 15 years old and a sophomore at Southern Columbia High School. He also enjoys playing in the high school band as well as scouting. Patrick is looking forward to getting his driver’s license.

We wish Patrick well in his future endeavors.

Congratulations to the following personnel for their efficiencies and helpfulness in the 3rd Quarter 2021.