TimesLeader.com

November 14, 2008
Nanticoke firm reducing use of toxic substances

By Rory Sweeney rsweeney@timesleader.com
Staff Writer

NANTICOKE – By the time the movie “Erin Brockovich” was educating cinemagoers about the toxicity of hexavalent chromium in 2000, Joe Reilly was fully aware of the carcinogen and had banned it from his business years before.

“We were probably getting out of hexavalent chromium back in the early 1990s,” said Reilly, the president of Reilly Finishing Technologies in Nanticoke.

The metal-plating company is still looking for ways to reduce its environmental footprint, recently enrolling in a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency program to voluntarily reduce the use of a list of highly toxic substances. Reilly committed to completely eliminating the metal cadmium from its nickel-coating process.

Cadmium causes cancer and builds up in body through repeated exposure, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. It’s used to stabilize a chemical reaction that deposits nickel on a surface being plated without using electricity, Reilly said.

The cadmium isn’t consumed in the reaction, however, and ends up in the hazardous waste product. Reilly said his company would use and discard up to 40 pounds of cadmium annually.

“It would be hazardous waste and go to the landfill and be there forever,” Reilly said.

Working with its suppliers, Reilly’s company switched to a proprietary process that avoids using heavy metals. “The cadmium was probably one of the last toxic metals we had to get rid of,” he said.

Though the process costs more to run, Reilly said, it was more about being “able to look myself in the mirror every day and knowing that I’m doing the right thing.” The company received a Governor’s Award for Environmental Excellence in 1999 for equipping its expansion facility with a closed-loop water recycling system that reduced water consumption and waste discharges.

“We’ve always tried to stay ahead of the curve as far as being environmentally proactive,” Reilly said. “Once we created that waste, it’s ours forever. So the less we create, the better off we are, and the less toxics we create the better off we are.”

The environmental conscientiousness also has a regulatory benefit for the company, which will celebrate four decades in operation next year. Reilly said state and federal oversight isn’t as “fist and hammer” as it can be, and regulators will often give the company a chance to correct problems before issuing violation notices.