U.S. Coast Guard Averts Environmental Clean Up with Bio Hydraulic Fluids Use

It's interesting what makes users "real believers" in biobased products.  James H. Smith (Jim), who works in the U.S. Coast Guard's Maintenance Department at The Group Air Station in Atlantic City, N.J., has been interested in biobased products for several years, but an experience in the heavy snow of President's Day weekend 2003 that hit much of the East Coast made him passionate on the subject.

"Our job is to take care of the helicopter tar-macs and the parking lots and sidewalks around the Coast Guard facilities here at the Air Station.

While one of our small tractors was clearing a parking lot of snow, a hydraulic hose frayed and sprayed its fluid with a pinstripe over the top of a 4 foot high snowdrift along a swath for 10 or 12 feet. Because it was a biobased fluid, all we had to do is fix the hose and keep on moving snow," explains Smith.

If it had been a petroleum based fluid, we would have been required to immediately remove the contaminated snow, and there is a lot of it when the snow is four feet deep and you have to take out 10 or 12 feet, haul it into a building where it could be melted and the contaminates collected.  All of that being time and money spent on something other than snow removal," states Jim.

But with the biobased product, nothing had to be done. The spill, being biobased and relatively small in volume, would simply melt away with the thaw and be safely absorbed into the environment.

"I've always been a believer in biobased products but this small example just shows you how convenient and time saving they can be, too," Smith says.

"OurHazardous Waste Safety Officer, Jeff Schmidt, encourages us to find and use biobased products whenever we can," says Smith.  Among the products used there are 2-cycle engine oil, bar and chain oil, penetrating lubricant and even 10W30 oil for the big aircraft power unit.  All of these uses are part of the facilitiy's efforts to comply with Executive Order 13101, Greening of the Government Through Waste Prevention, Recycling and Federal Acquisition, issued in 1998.