Nine 55-gallon drums, 2,669 cardboard boxes, 11,000 pounds of metal and 31,000 bottles and cans. This is what one auto repair shop in Tempe diverted from Arizona landfills in 2010.
The 22-employee Salem Boys Auto repair shop located near Warner Road and Priest Drive has used environmentally friendly practices since its opening 17 years ago.
The shop’s 55-gallon red, blue and green drums, which were saved from a landfill, are now being used to recycle and divert more metal, plastic and cardboard from Arizona landfills, said Mark and Ranae Salem, owners of Salem Auto Repair.
Mark Salem said he and a friend pulled the colorful drums out of a Dumpster while on a double date.
Field studies involving real businesses like Salem Boys Auto are part of the curriculum in sustainable practice classes taught by Nicholas Hild, ASU’s director of the Environmental Technology Management program at ASU’s College of Technology and Innovation.
Hild said Salem was “way ahead of his time” when it came to designing a facility and business that was environmentally conscious.
Hild said Salem started his auto repair business shortly after the time in the 1980s when the nation was forced to look at groundwater contamination coming from the “perfectly legal at the time” disposal of used motor oil, antifreeze and other automobile related fluids into underground storage tanks and landfills.
This disposal practice contaminated the aquifers, underground water sources used by many cities, Hild said.
He added that Tucson receives 100 percent of its water from an underground aquifer. Water received from the Central Arizona Project is used only to recharge Tucson’s aquifer, Hild said.
Salem said he is happy to share the fact that his facility has no underground storage tanks and uses two “dry wells,” also known as “French drains,” to reduce soil contamination.
The dry wells act as a drain during rainstorms that filter out spilled motor oil and other chemicals that could wash off the pavement and into the ground if the dry wells weren’t there, Salem said.
Stormwater runoff is also a concern for Maricopa County Community Outreach Coordinator Paul Catanzariti.
Catanzariti said most people don’t realize that storm drains seen on the street do not feed into a treatment facility like sewer drains.
The Maricopa storm drain system empties directly into lakes, rivers and retention basins, not a treatment facility, Catanzariti said.
Oil dripping onto the pavement from a car will eventually get into the groundwater supply through the storm drains, Catanzariti added.
Tempe Environmental Quality Specialist Christina Hoppes estimates that over the past nine years, Tempe pumped an average 1.86 billion gallons of groundwater per year for use in the Tempe water system.
This groundwater is in addition to the water Tempe receives from the Central Arizona Project water system, which transports water from the Colorado River to Central and Southern Arizona via a system of canals.
Since CAP canals are dry about 30 percent of the year for cleaning, Hild estimated that the greater Phoenix area also depends on groundwater for about 30 percent of its water needs.
But for Mark and Ranae Salem, the biggest motivation for running their business in an eco-friendly way isn’t the money saved or income earned, they said. It’s knowing that they have an auto shop their children can inherit that’s worth more than what it would cost to clean it up if they didn’t incorporate environmentally-friendly business practices.
Reach the reporter at cbleone@asu.edu
