Efficient, Safe, Cost-Effective
HHW & VSQG Collection Program Infrastructure & Operations
Expert Guidance
We assist communities in building or improving their infrastructure & operations to more effectively manage household hazardous waste (HHW) and very small quantity generator (VSQG) waste.
Founded by one of the nation's leading experts, David Nightingale CHMM, who has performed site visits at 160+ HHW collection facilities in the United States and Canada.
This breadth of exposure provides an exceptional basis for assisting clients in meeting their unique HHW and VSQG management needs.
28
VISITED
STATES
161
HHW
FACILITIES
What We Do
Consulting
Services include:
Training
From HHW collection facility design workshops to HAZWOPER courses we provide top-tier training. To meet your unique training needs we combine nationally-recognized curriculum and instructors with customized course delivery.
Publications
A Comprehensive HHW Collection Facility Design Guide with valuable insights and real-world examples for designers, project managers, and HHW professionals.
How We Work
From visiting 160 HHW collection facilities in 28 states & 3 provinces, we are uniquely qualified to assist you in developing or improving your HHW and VSQG collection infrastructure and operations. This starts by understanding your project context including program goals and policy drivers. Given your project context Special Waste Associates (SWA) provides a focused set of services ranging from assisting in finding a suitable site for an HHW collection facility, to offering assistance from pre-design programming through review of final design plans and specifications.,
We typically work under contract directly for the program sponsor as your expert advocate before the design process starts. This pre-design discovery helps you refine and set the appropriate expectations and context for the design process. Our experience with many local building officials and design teams provides confidence in moving projects forward. We facilitate clearer project focus and direction to optimize facility design features for safe and efficient operations.
In addition to HHW collection infrastructure consulting, SWA is also a leading firm in providing HHW collection system evaluation and analysis, health and safety training, and the publisher of professional reference materials.
Each of our clients brings a unique set of constraints, talents, resources, and program objectives to their projects. To most effectively execute each project requires complete project awareness and flexibility to best match our services with your project needs. Consequently, we provide differing levels of effort and, if needed, additional specialists to serve the specific and unique needs of your project.
Carbon On The Move
Coal and Oil Trains
Three videos showing massive movement of coal and oil trains heading north through Western Washington.
What's Likely?
-
Coal to burn being shipped from British Columbia to China. The train to the right has at least 108 coal cars.
If this coal was burned in the US the following emissions would be put into the air:
24.5 thousand tons of CO2 (global warming)
47.4 tons of SO2 (makes acid rain)
26.4 tons of NOx (can damage lungs and crops, creates dangerous PM2.5 particulates) Also, notice the stationary oil train on the track just to the right of the coal train.
-
The horizontal video of a coal train at the bottom left side of this page shows 265 coal cars in this single train shipment! More than twice as much coal as the train in video #1.
-
Bakken Formation Oil shipped to refineries in Northwest Washington. This train has at least 73 oil cars which carry between 28,500 to 29,500 gallons in each tanker car. That's as much as 2,135,500 gallons of flammable crude oil on this train.
-
Another Bakken Crude Oil train with 102 oil rail cars in tow.
1
2
3
4
