Denton City Council OKs ethanol plant

By Lowell Brown / Staff Writer
Denton Record-Chronicle

A company’s plan to build an ethanol plant at a south Denton industrial park won approval Tuesday from the City Council.

Tetra Point Fuels of Flower Mound plans to take soda, beer, sports drinks and other sugary liquids that have expired or have packaging defects and covert them to ethanol, a cleaner-burning renewable fuel often combined with unleaded gasoline. The facility would differ from the more conventional grain-based ethanol plants, which have been blamed for increasing corn prices.

Council members approved a permit to allow heavy manufacturing inside an existing building at the Granite Point Industrial Park at Interstate 35W and Metro Street. The company hopes to start ethanol production there by spring 2008, with an initial capacity of 4 million to 5 million gallons a year, said Tim Geiger, company president.

Denton is already home to Biodiesel Industries of Greater Dallas Fort Worth, which produces biodiesel fuel from recycled vegetable oils.

“This is one more cog in the wheel of Denton becoming a leader in recycling and reusing products,” Mayor Perry McNeill said of the Tetra plant. “These are products that have served a useful life and this company is proposing to covert these into fuel.”

Texas currently has one plant producing ethanol, in Cleburne, but a number are planned or are under construction around the state, said Russel E. Smith, executive director of the Texas Renewable Energy Industries Association. The industry is expanding at a time when Congress is considering raising the national standard for biofuel production, he said.

Texas oil refineries also are substituting ethanol for the gasoline additive MTBE in areas of the state that failed to meet federal clean air standards, including the Dallas-Fort Worth and Houston areas, Smith said.

“That’s where a huge amount of fuel is consumed,” he said.

At the Denton ethanol plant, trucks will bring in liquid products discarded by the food and beverage industry, and otherwise destined for a landfill, Geiger said. The company will separate and recycle the containers while fermenting and distilling the liquids into ethanol, which is then sold to commodities buyers, he said.

Council members raised questions about potential odors and increased traffic on Metro Street and the I-35 frontage road.

Interim Planning Director Brian Lockley said large tanker trucks would visit the facility several times a day, but that other traffic would be minimal. Geiger said the production process would produce some odor, but nothing noxious.

LOWELL BROWN can be reached at 940-566-6882. His e-mail address is lmbrown@dentonrc.com.

NTCRA announces Environmental Vision Award Winners!

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
August 27, 2007
Contact: Fran Witte, President
North Texas Corporate Recycling Association (NTCRA)
(972) 742-2296
www.ntcra.org



Area Organizations Earn Environmental Awards
From North Texas Corporate Recycling Association

The North Texas Corporate Recycling Association will host its annual Environmental Vision Awards Luncheon on Friday, September 14 recognizing outstanding environmental programs of thirteen D/FW organizations. The event is being held at the City of Dallas, 1500 Marilla Street, on the 6th Floor in the Flag Room beginning at 11 a.m.

Keynote Speaker is Deputy Mayor Pro Tem Dwaine Caraway. Councilman Caraway has been called a go-to person on community issues. He knows that neighborhood and civic involvement is an ongoing mission, not something that is done only when elections take place. He is visible in helping the community on a year-round basis, and committed to improving District 4 “One Block at a Time.” Councilman Caraway has been invited to serve as the event’s Keynote Speaker to address Dallas’ efforts in regards to building a sustainable environment.

The NTCRA’s Annual Environmental Vision Awards serves as a venue to recognize area businesses, government entities, schools, civic groups and individuals for their outstanding contributions toward positive environmental impacts. The following were selected by a panel of judges as having the most outstanding program in their categories:

Non-Profit/Community Volunteerism – Keep Allen Beautiful

Individual – Vicki Riley

Business With Less Than 100 Employees/Recycling – Krispy Kreme

Business With Less Than 100 Employees/Community Relations – Community Waste Disposal

Schools/Sustainability – Stipes Elementary School in Irving

Business With Greater Than 100 Employees/Recycling – Hensley Industries

Business With Greater Than 100 Employees/Sustainability – Wal-Mart SuperCenters and Sams Clubs in Plano

Business With Greater Than 100 Employees/Construction – Austin Commercial

Government/Schools – Landscaping – University of Texas at Arlington and the City of Arlington

Government/Schools – Community Relations – City of Plano and Plano Independent School District

Government/Recycling – City of Dallas

Government/Community Relations – City of Grand Prairie

Others being honored include Dillon Harmon, United Copper Industries, Lockheed Martin, Alcon, and the City of Irving for outstanding environmental programs.

The NTCRA has been a part of the Dallas-Fort Worth recycling landscape for more than 20 years. The NTCRA exists to promote recycling and the use of recycled goods to area businesses through leadership, advocacy, and education. We provide forums to members of the business community in which to learn more about environmental awareness, as well as exchange of information, coordination of special programs and events, and mentoring.

For more information about the NTCRA’s Environmental Vision Awards or the NTCRA, please contact Fran Witte at 972-742-2296 or visit the website at www.ntcra.org.

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North Texas Corporate Recycling Association ● P.O. Box 860365 ● Plano, Texas 75086-0365
www.ntcra.org

Don't miss the NTCRA's Environmental Vision Awards Luncheon on Friday, September 14 at Dallas City Hall. For more information, visit www.ntcra.org.

Good news from beverage industry

The Wall Street Journal

After months of pressure to reduce waste, the beverage industry is stepping up efforts to promote recycling and use more recycled plastic in production of its soda, water, juice and tea bottles.

Some companies are reformulating containers to reduce the amount of plastic.

Who's doing what

Coca-Cola says it's planning a plant that can recycle as many as 2 billion 20-ounce bottles a year. The company has a 36 percent share of the business in U.S. nonalcoholic ready-to-drink beverages, a $106-billion-a-year industry, and it has built recycling plants in Australia, Austria, Mexico, the Philippines and Switzerland. Coke wants to boost the recycled material in its U.S. bottles to at least 10 percent, from less than 5 percent in 2006.

Coke and its biggest bottler, Coca-Cola Enterprises, have formed a company that plans to open centers in the U.S. to collect recyclable beverage material.

The American Beverage Association trade group has formed a task force from Coke, PepsiCo and Nestle's U.S. water unit to look for ways to spark consumer interest in recycling. One possibility: throwing the industry's weight behind efforts to clone the best programs.

Coke, Pepsi and other beverage companies typically fought laws mandating deposits on bottles and cans. But some beverage makers are starting to warm up to financial incentives for recycling. Coke has invested more than $2 million in RecycleBank Llc., a company that gives consumers in Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware coupons for their throwaways. The program will expand to parts of New England. The company is also in talks with PepsiCo.

Why now?

The tidal wave of bottled water -- just 17 percent of the U.S. market share, compared with 66 percent for soft drinks, but growing rapidly while soft-drink sales have declined -- has increased the beverage industry's ravenous appetite for plastic. Demand for recycled polyethylene terephthalate, known as PET, is fierce because it can cost 50 percent less than new plastic.

PET bottles are cheap, lightweight and more convenient than refillable glass bottles, which require gallons of water to be cleaned and are heavier to transport.

In the U.S., just 23 percent of recyclable PET bottles and jars were recycled in 2005, down from 40 percent a decade earlier, according to the National Association for PET Container Resources.

The U.S. Government Accountability Office said in December that a federal bottle-deposit bill could help boost municipal recycling rates.

Fending off a federal bill could require the industry to show continued signs that it is willing to change.

Coke and Pepsi have reduced the plastic in their soft-drink bottles, which are heavier than water bottles to preserve carbonation. Coke says it will eliminate 100 million pounds of plastic from its U.S. products this year.

Pepsi, which gets about 10 percent of the PET it uses in the U.S. from recycled materials, says it has trimmed the amount of plastic in its half-liter Aquafina water bottles by nearly 40 percent since 2002. The company is working on an even lighter version. Nestle, with regional brands Poland Spring and Arrowhead, recently introduced lighter bottles.