May 2020: CIRCON’s Treatment, Storage, and Disposal Facility
What's News
Last month, we were proud to share with you exciting news about continued growth and new business within our Waste Treatment and Recycling service line. This month, the good news continues as we turn our attention to our Treatment, Storage, and Disposal Facility. We’ve hired two new team members in recent months to help us grow this part of our business, and hope you’ll join us in officially welcoming Wendy Mason and Michael Jaskowiak to our team.
Wendy joins us as a Business Development Specialist, Wendy has a distinguished 20 year career in sales and business development with 8 years of National Account industrial waste and recycling experience from industries including Republic Services and Stericycle.
Michael comes to the CIRCON family as a Business Development Manager specializing in Containerized Waste. He’ll be working to build new business for the TSDF Containerized Waste facility at Lonestar Ecology. He has 31 years of experience in account management, nearly a decade of which were spent as a Refinery Senior Account Manager at Clean Harbors Industrial Services.
The growth in this division is the result of a focused effort to create a better experience for our customers and our prospective customers. In addition to welcoming Wendy and Michael to the team, we’ve realigned our resources and now have a dedicated customer service representative Linda Perezto help guide clients through all TSDF-related concerns. You can reach Linda by phone 832-779-6327 or email lperez@circonenviro.com. Sales and operations are collaborating more closely than ever, which has allowed us to serve new, high-profile customers. We’re connecting with clients faster, serving them more effectively, and winning their trust—and their business.
Did You Know?
Beginning in January, we introduced a new piece of equipment to our TSDF team: the CIRCON Box. This double-walled container and piece of machinery allows our team to bulk materials, and inside, our patented agitation system helps process and ready them for eventual use as fuel by our kiln partners.
We’re investing in this equipment because its benefits are many. This will help boost our sustainability metrics, as we’re providing an appealing alternative to incineration, a method that isn’t just more costly, but also creates ash that would likely will end up in a landfill.
There are also considerable economic benefits. In the past, these kinds of waste materials had to be processed drum-by-drum, which could be time consuming and costly. Now, the ability to bulk drums and process them more efficiently reduces our operating costs from about 30 cents per pound to just 2 cents per pound. That translates to more profit for us, and more fuel for the kilns. It’s a better way.
Three Questions with Ken Crumpler
Ken Crumpler manages CIRCON’s hazardous waste TSDF, and his work is built on 30 years of experience in our industry, focused on hazardous and industrial waste management. He’s clocked time at Veolia, and spent three years at Intergulf prior to the CIRCON merger. Now, Ken’s focused on improving efficiencies within the department—and the CIRCON box is helping to make that job a lot more manageable.
How has the CIRCON Box changed the way the TSDF team works?
We love it. It’s essentially a big square box with an electric motor and paddles, and you dump or pour a mud-type material in there, add a solvent, and it takes it all back to a liquid. What would normally be very expensive for someone to dispose of—and require a lot more hassle and management—is now much easier and cheaper to dispose of.
It takes a little bit of experience to know how to work it, because you have to be careful of what you mix so there’s not a reaction that creates a solid. But we’re used to taking different approaches to handling different materials in this division, because we work with such a variety: solvents, paint, flammable paints, paint removers, and a lot of recyclable materials, too, from lightbulbs and computer boards and radios that get ground up and sent back to the manufacturer to make other electronics.
Recycling radios isn’t something you immediately think of when you think of CIRCON. What kind of clients do those jobs come from?
We manage a lot of schools, actually. We help everyone from junior high schools to colleges cleanup research labs or facilities that aren’t in use anymore. And any time we can help people repurpose waste, we know we’re helping them do the right thing. It gives you a little bit of satisfaction—well, not a little bit, actually, I love what we do here.
Within your division, how has business been progressing lately, especially at such an unprecedented time?
The hazardous waste industry is business as usual. We’re taking in 200 drums or containers a day, though we are minimizing personal interaction and focusing a bit more on scheduling to make sure that we’re on time for our customers and they know exactly when to expect us. But I think as an industry and a community, as we move past this current world situation, everything is going to come back stronger than ever.