Sanimax

Sanimax is, according to its own PR spin, "North America’s leading BioReturn™ company. . . . Our roots lie in rendering, one of the world’s oldest methods of recycling. More than a century later, it continues to be a central part of our business, but we’ve also taken the underlying philosophy of rendering - reclaiming material, renewing it, and returning it to the market - and extended it in new directions."

Involvement with the Toxic Sludge Industry
One of Sanimax's projects, in the Green Bay, Wisconsin area, is taking waste from:


 * "Two Green Bay beef processing plants – each of which emit three kinds of waste (barn manure, paunch or undigested food from the slaughtered animals’ stomachs, and liquid); and
 * "Biosolids from two metropolitan sewer systems – Green Bay and De Pere.
 * "Manure from dairy and cattle operations."

What do it and its partners in the project do with these materials? "Process it and sell it around the world as nutrient-rich, pathogen-free fertilizer nuggets."

Collecting Toxic Sludge
"Biosolids" is the Orwellian PR euphemism for toxic sewage sludge.

A list of just some of the hazardous chemicals and pathogens found in sludge can be found in the article Sludge contaminants. Sludge contaminants include Dioxins and Furans, Flame Retardants, Metals, Organochlorine Pesticides, 1,2-Dibromo-3-Chloropropane (DBCP), Naphthalene, Triclosan, Nonylphenols, Phthalates, Nanosilver, and thousands more substances. "Sewage is the mix of water and whatever wastes from domestic and industrial life are flushed into the sewer. ... We must note that, though the aim of sewage treatment is to produce clean water, it is never to produce 'clean' sludge.  Indeed, the 'dirtier' the sludge - the more complete its concentration of the noxious wastes - the more the treatment has done its job. ... very waste produced in our society that can be got rid of down toilets and drains and that can also be got out of the sewage by a given treatment process will be in the sludge.  Sludge is thus inevitably a noxious brew of vastly various and incompatible materials unpredictable in themselves and in the toxicity of their amalgamation, incalculably but certainly wildly dangerous to life."

Disposing of Sludge by Spreading it on Agricultural Land
Sanimax claims that processed waste from beef processing plants, metropolitan sewer systems and dairy and cattle operations can be sold as "nutrient-rich, pathogen-free fertilizer nuggets."

According to Sludge News, "[t]he policy of disposing of sludge by spreading it on agricultural land - a policy given the benign term 'land application' - has its inception in the Ocean Dumping ban of 1987. Before 1992, when the law went into effect, the practice had been, after extracting the sludge from the wastewater, to load it on barges and dump it 12, and later 106 miles off shore into the ocean. But many people who cared about life in the ocean knew that, wherever it was dumped, the sludge was causing vast dead moon-scapes on the ocean floor.  New EPA regulations for 'land application' were promulgated in 1993. With the aid of heating and pelletizing and some slippery name morphs along the way, EPA claimed sludge could be transmogrified into 'compost' ...  .  But the land “application” of sewage sludge ...  will pollute the whole chain of life for which soil is the base."

Participant in the 2011 BioCycle 11th Annual Conference on "Renewable Energy from Organics Recycling"
Sanimax was a participant in the 2011 BioCycle 11th Annual Conference on "Renewable Energy from Organics Recycling." BioCycle Magazine is a publication serving the interests of the sewage sludge industry.

Contact
2099 Shawano Ave. Green Bay, WI 54303 Phone: 920.494.5233 Toll-Free : 800.955.6355 Fax: 920.494.9141 Web: http://www.sanimax.com/

Other SourceWatch Resources

 * Toxic sludge
 * Toxic Sludge Portal
 * Sludge contaminants
 * Sewage sludge