INDUSTRY & BUSINESS

Companies dig deeper to cut pollution Chemical industry awaits standards, debates timing,

adds millions to pollution control budgets

Despite frequently uneconomical tech­nology and a general lack of standards for pollution control, many chemical companies project marked increases in investment for this year and beyond to counter air and water contamination. The planned expenditures will add to pollution abatement outlays which al­ready run into tens of millions and, for at least one company, hundreds of mil­lions of dollars. The outlook is for fu­ture millions in operating costs.

Chemical companies generally praise their industry's investment in pollution control to date. -But some call present spending rates inadequate, especially on air pollution. Industry spokesmen and government officials say greater initiative is possible in in­dustry and more sophistication is needed in justifying money for pollu­tion abatement.

This year, Dow Chemical plans a $3 million capital investment in pollution control (up from $1 million in 1965 and $800,000 in 1960). These figures exclude control facilities that are an integral part of an operation.

Allied Chemical estimates its capi­tal expenditure this year for pollution abatement facilities at $4.5 million.

EXPENSIVE. P. B. Hodges (right) of Monsanto's 50-man pollution staff checks air scrubber—a $300,000 item —at Monsanto, III., plant

Its annual outlay will rise to $5 to $6 million for 1968 to 1970. However, the figures do not include capital spending on process changes, modifi­cations, renovations, and research fa­cilities.

Jefferson Chemical says it will spend more this year than before on pollu­tion control to meet more stringent standards. Monsanto expects to spend more in 1968 after decisions by states on water pollution standards this year.

Stauffer Chemical estimates that provisions for pollution abatement will represent 2 to 3 % of total capital outlay for new projects. Stauffer plans a total capital expenditure of $50 million this year. (A 1966 survey by the National Industrial Conference Board showed pollution abatement expenditures as less than 5% of total capital investment for most of the 75 companies disclosing such data.)

Stauffer expects this investment rate to continue on new installations, al­though older plants may receive stepped-up expenditures as more ef­ficient equipment becomes available and more private homes are built closer to plant sites.

Stauffer says this percentage esti­mate is a preliminary figure made in view of recent interest in tax incen­tives for pollution abatement expendi­tures. Other chemical companies also state they are breaking down cost figures for pollution control for the first time.

Du Pont reports pollution abate­ment expenditures in terms of a figure for all currently operating and author­ized projects. The total for air and water facilities stood at $114 million near the end of last year, following a $14 million gain over the previous year. The figure has climbed more than 80% from 1960's $63 million.

Other major chemical companies have spent correspondingly large totals for pollution abatement equip­ment. Dow says its investment for the past 10 years is more than $25 million. Allied puts its total invest­ment in pollution control facilities to date at about $50 million, but it doesn't specify the starting year. It adds that such figures cannot reflect its full abatement effort, since they omit money spent on advances achieved by process changes.

Monsanto has spent some $25 mil­lion to date on pollution control equip­ment, but it does not specify for what period. Monsanto has devoted even larger sums to what it regards as product recovery systems—so named because of the value of materials re­trieved. However, with respect to op­erating environments, these systems serve the same purpose as pollution control equipment.

Monsanto says the annual cost of operating and maintaining its pollu­tion equipment is $5 million. Operat­ing costs at Dow run $4 to $5 million per year. Wyandotte reports an oper­ating expense of $500,000 per year and a total investment through the years of more than $5 million.

A 1966 survey of 50 chemical plants in Texas by the Texas Chemical Coun­cil showed a total annual operating cost for permanent pollution control facilities of more than $10 million (over 15%) on a total pollution con­trol investment base of more than $66 million. Using a different meas­ure of the operating cost of pollution control facilities, NICB says in a pol­lution control survey that such costs claim between 0.5 and 1.5% of com­panies' total operating expenses.

Current pollution abatement invest­ment in the chemical industry covers a variety of small improvements but also concentrates on major projects:

• Union Carbide is contributing to a million-dollar expansion of a cooper­ative sewage treatment plant at South Charleston, W.Va. The company also plans air pollution abatement pro­grams at all of its metals plants, which present some of the company's tough­est pollution problems.

• Allied has started a control project at its dye plant in Buffalo, N.Y., in­volving complex bio-treatment and process research. Allied calls plant wastes historically the most difficult to handle.

•Rohm and Haas is completing most of a $1 million liquid waste proj­ect at its Houston, Tex., plant this year. It also has a sizable liquid waste project at its nylon fiber plant being built at Fayetteville, N.C.

Companies are also investing in ex­tra technical manpower to curb pol­lution. Du Pont plans to expand an air and water consultant group

32 C&EN FEB. 6, 1967

Adequacy of spending

is pure conjecture

until standards are set

Dow's Doan

Fools if we do not

act now, before

Stauffer's Anthony we are forced to act

(one part of the firm's antipollution force) in its engineering services divi­sion. The group currently has about 10 members evenly divided between air and water areas. They visit plants to advise on pollution control.

Monsanto employs about 50 techni­cal people in pollution control (the majority full-time in such work). The company says it is trying to hire more but, at least in the air pollution field, has found few qualified people who can propose methods of eliminating pollutants as well as detecting them. Monsanto says that air pollution per­sonnel, unlike water pollution experts (who have come mainly from the fields of sanitary or civil engineering), seem to lack a chemical background.

Dow also has a hard time finding qualified people for pollution control. The company has decided to hire Hve trainees with bachelor's degrees and give them two years' training in Mid­land, Mich., and then send them wherever they are needed. The five will join 65 Dow employees now working exclusively on pollution con­trol.

Other chemical producers are giv­ing pollution control training to pres­ent employees who have engineering or science backgrounds. Rohm and Haas has men in such training at two of its plants. Union Carbide also prefers this means of adding to its pollution control staff, which numbers from 15 to 25 at different times.

With their expanded counterpollu-tion groups and projects, do chemical companies think spending rates for pollution control are now sufficient?

Many defer an answer until standards for pollutant levels are developed. Stauffer's director of accident and pol­lution control, Dr. Mark V. Anthony, states a common case: "The chemical industry has been in the vanguard of those industries combating both air and water pollution problems, but whether the present rate of spending is adequate must remain pure conjec­ture until industry learns what air and water quality standards must be met."

Nevertheless, Dow concludes that

the chemical industry is not doing enough. Speaking recently of pollu­tion and industry in general, Dow president Herbert D. Doan com­mented: "We would like to see pollu­tion go away, but we'd all like to see the other fellow pay for removing it. It is in this context that industry today is being called upon to exercise new leadership. The only question really is whether industry will recognize in time the opportunity it now has to seize this leadership, to show the way to licking this problem. I personally believe we are fools if we do not act now—before we are forced to act."

Another chemical company also re­gards the industry's efforts against pol­lution as not enough in the long run. The firm believes the industry will probably have to do much more to meet air purity standards now being discussed.

The spending necessary to meet fu­ture standards need not be written off as pure cost, sources in and out of in­dustry believe. Secretary of the In­terior Udall told an NICB meeting in New York City in December, "It is industry's challenge to look for profit opportunities in pollution control

COOPERATIVE. Union Carbide is contributing to a $1.8 million expansion of this South Charleston, W.Va., plant that treats city sewage and waste from Carbide's plant. Carbide believes it is now on top of water pollution problems

FEB. 6, 1967 C&EN 33

BUSINESS PERSPECTIVES

DAVID M. KIEFER, Senior Editor The growing alphabetical

anonymity of big business

What's in a name? In the world of big business, it appears, quite a lot. How else do you explain the increasing number of distinguished companies that have chosen to cloak their activities and their backgrounds in an alphabetical anonymity.

A couple of months from now, stockholders of Pittsburgh Plate Glass Co. will be voting to rechristen their company as PPG Industries, Inc. (The name change won't take place formally until next year.) The motives for the trans­formation are familiar. More than 60 years have passed since PPG's fortunes were tied solely to plate glass, which accounts for only about a sixth of PPG's sales today. And while Pittsburgh remains the corpo­ration's headquarters, its operations have long been national and now are becoming more international in scope. So PPG has opted for a new, all-purpose appellation to escape a regional, one-product image that it feels is no longer appropriate.

PPG is in good company. Increasingly during the past few years, corporations have sought to shake off a cumbersome and confining industry or product label as they broaden their corporate range.

The practice certainly is by no means new. Standard Oil Co. of New York contracted to Socony more than 35 years ago. (Socony itself, of course, has now given way to Mobil Oil.) National Oil Prod­ucts Co. was trimmed in 1947 to Nopco Chemical (which is not to be confused with Napco Industries, formerly Northwestern Auto Parts Co.), while National Aluminate Corp. shrank in 1959 to Nalco Chemi­cal (not to be confused with Natco Corp., which once was known as National Fireproofing Corp.).

The new breed of acronymous titles has a certain snappy, modern, streamlined ring perhaps more fitting for today's hurried business community than the lilt or the stately cadences of such traditional names as E. I. du Pont de Nemours & Co., The Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Co., or The Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railway System. They also tend to veil the humdrum business world in a cloud of mystery where unwary outsiders find it more and more difficult to discern who makes what for whom. You must think twice to distinguish FMC Corp. from UMC Industries or SCM Corp. The mind is taxed to differentiate Uarco, Inc., from Unarco Industries; Genesco, Inc., from Genisco Tech­nology Corp.; GF Industries from G-L Industries; or Cominco from Corenco from ConChemCo from Cameo. And it fairly boggles when forced to cope with an alphabetical array like AMK Corp., AMP, Inc., AMT Corp., APL Corp., A. V. C. Corp., and AVM Corp.

That hazards lurk in newly coined names is obvious to some of the coiners themselves. United States Rubber Co., for example, appar­ently is concerned about maintaining a corporate identity as it passes through its metamorphosis into a more worldly Uniroyal, Inc.—which is not an acronym at all but is derived from the company's most familiar tradename. Stockholders already have given their blessing to the transformation, which is slated to become official in the next month or two. Meanwhile, for nearly two years U.S. Rubber has been conduct­ing an elaborate advertising campaign which poses the question "What is a Uniroyal?" and hopefully will make the public familiar with what its new name stands for by the time it becomes official.

So far, no company has carried the practice to its logical conclu­sion—along the path so successfully charted by American Telephone and Telegraph (more familiarly, AT&T) when it dropped names for numbers in designating telephone exchanges. In our increasingly computerized and zip-coded environment, however, the stark simplic­ity of an all-digit name might have considerable merit. Perhaps a harbinger already has hesitantly made its appearance in the name of choice for one of the nation's most progressive concerns. It's not an official title, to be sure, but the well-known producer of Scotch tape for the past five years has preferred to call itself 3M. Why not? A terse "3M" undoubtedly packs every bit as much meaning as the more mellifluously alliterative "Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Co." from which it stems. And takes up less space, as well.

rather than simply to assume added costs [nearly $300 billion by the year 2000] of cleaning up."

Other industry spokesmen view pol­lution economics in a similar light. Stanley Paist, manager of air and wa­ter conservation at Rohm and Haas, states that pollution means loss of product. Curbing pollution can give more efficient production processes, and better process engineering can also cut pollution. Mr. Paist cites in­stances at Rohm and Haas in which pollution abatement has paid for itself through recovery of products formerly lost as dust or foam.

Dr. Anthony suggested a further in­direct profit in pollution control at the NICB meeting. "In my opinion, our [Stauffer's] landmark step forward in pollution control was made when top management became convinced that pollution control was necessary for maximum profit even though the dol­lar value of the additional product re­covered frequently does not justify the capital and operating expenditure.

"This advance in sophistication came about when management recog­nized that with our type of chemical operation, the indirect and often difficult-to-measure savings brought about by increased labor efficiency, lower maintenance costs, reduced lia­bility claims, etc., could greatly mul­tiply the benefit beyond the direct dol­lar value of the product recovered."

Air pollution critical. The area most in need of such financial insight may be air pollution, which many chemical companies regard as the great un­solved technical problem of the future. For instance, Union Carbide considers that it is now nearly on top of the company's major water pollution prob­lems but faces a longer road in master­ing control of air contamination.

A concurring view comes from Nel­son J. Ehlers, assistant to the vice president and general manager of PPG Industries' chemical division. "In the long run, water pollution may be the country's more difficult problem, but for the operator of a chemical plant, air pollution could be the more diffi­cult. For our company, air pollution will be a big problem because the use of our products such as chlorine and chlorinated solvents could lead to problems. We have to assume a moral responsibility that our products ship safely."

Monsanto agrees that more techni­cal effort is needed to solve air pollu­tion but sees water pollution as the more costly to control. The Texas Chemical Council survey revealed that existing Texas water pollution control facilities cost nearly twice as much to operate as air pollution con­trol facilities representing nearly the same level of investment.

34 C&EN FEB. 6, 1967