
Managing Waste
Most industries produce waste in one form or another, directly or indirectly. At NextEra Energy, we believe minimizing our waste footprint presents an opportunity to deliver outstanding value for our environment, customers, communities, employees and shareholders. We produce a variety of waste streams, including:
- Construction waste streams resulting from demolition or development.
- Hazardous and non-hazardous waste generated from operations.
- Various recyclable wastes from office buildings.
- Used nuclear fuel produced from reliable, emissions-free nuclear fleet operations.
All of these waste streams are managed in accordance with local, state and federal regulations.
At FPL, waste streams generated at power plants and operating centers are sent to the company's waste consolidation facility to be sorted. This operation is designed to look for opportunities to reduce, reuse and recycle materials so that we minimize the waste that we must send to local landfills.
Reduce
We believe that the best way to deliver value by minimizing our waste footprint begins with reducing the amount of waste we generate in the first place. That's why we've:
- Modernized many of our facilities to reduce the amount of oil-ash generated.
- Banned the use of chlorinated solvents at our facilities.
- Established a program to replace substation and switchyard oil-filled breakers with gas-insulated equipment.
- Continued to phase out polychlorinated biphenyl (PCB) equipment from the company's system -- currently, only eight known PCB transformers remain in our operations with plans to remove them during future plant maintenance.
We also have greatly reduced the amount of hazardous waste we generate. For example, at FPL, with the exception of the company's waste consolidation facility, each of our more than 80 operating facilities generate less than half the volume of a 55-gallon drum of hazardous waste every month.
Reuse and Recycle
We are committed to reducing our waste footprint across our fleet and actively seek opportunities to identify and implement reuse and recycling programs that result in environmental, social, and economic benefits. In 2019, our Corporate Recycling and Services (CRS) facility reconditioned and redirected nearly $5 million worth of hardware back into inventory, which helped to reduce the waste stream.
In addition, our investment recovery team, which oversees the release of surplus and dormant material and encourages redeployment to other plants for extended use where possible, engages a seven-step process for asset disposition when they reach the end-of-use stage: reuse, recondition, return, resell, reclaim, recycle and remove. A few of our reuse and recycling accomplishments for 2019 are below.