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This is some valuable information that I received from ordering the Investment packet I thought I would share. I scanned it in and copied the wording exactly as in the Article Reprint. Please take a look and post coments.
Itronics
Silver and fertilizer from spent photochemicals
The recycling industry in the US has struggled. No matter how much lip service the public pays to earth-friendly enterprise, profit is still the driving force of indus¬try. Too many variables including unrealistic costs and undeveloped markets doom many idealistic endeavors to marginal success and more to downright failure.
Itronics Inc however has a business model that tran-scends the pitfalls that have plagued less integrated envi-ronmental firms and is poised to prove that a company can be earth-friendly and very profitable.
Through its subsidiary Itronics Metallurgical, Inc., Itronics Inc. provides photochemical waste collection services. The company recovers and refines silver from the collected waste, then from the processed residual, manufactures and markets GOLD'nGRO - a line of liquid fertilizers specially designed to address specific plant nutrition needs. The company which' derives revenues from all three facets has barely begun to tap either the source market or the market for its revolu¬tionary fertilizers.
To understand the value and the potential of Itronics' waste collection services, one needs to understand the extent of the waste. Something in the neighborhood of 100 million gallons of photographic wastes are generated in the United States every year, the unavoidable byproduct of photo processing facilities, medical radiology labs, com¬mercial printers, government agencies and various other industries. The waste is toxic. It contains a mixture of inor¬ganic salts, organic compounds, inorganic sulfur com¬pounds and heavy metals, most notably silver. Disposing of these millions of gallons of toxic waste presents a significant environ¬mental challenge.
Silver is not an original compo¬nent of the liquids used in the devel¬oping process, but silver halide crys¬tals are the basic light sensitive materials used in photographic films and papers. During processing, unexposed silver is stripped from the film and paper and carried out in the waste liquid, mosdy in the fixing bath, but in the developer as well.
Silver gets most of the attention as a source of conta-mination from photographic materials because the EPA has determined that photowaste is toxic purely because of the silver.
However, many of those previously mentioned chemicals contained in die waste fluids are also harmful to aquatic and other life and should not be discharged to local sewage systems.
Additionally, the nitrogen (ammonia) content of photo-graphic waste is high - between one and three percent. Removing nitrogen from the waste stream is an expensive proposition. A medium sized community can expect to spend in excess of S6 million yearly to get that service from its treat¬ment plant.
A 1989 study conducted by Itronics underscores the enor-mity of the problem. The company found that the total month¬ly discharge of photochemicals in a community of 150,000 to 200,000 would be the equivalent of dumping a 3,000 to 5,000 gallon tank of relatively concentrated chemicals into the treat-ment system. The equivalent is occurring even-day in commu-nities across our country.
Various types of silver recovery technologies are in use, but photowaste generators requiring on-site monitoring of sil¬ver concentration levels have learned the cost can mount up quickly.
Estimated compliance costs for a medium-sized generator (25 to 100 gallons of fix per week) are 512,000 for the equip¬ment, and an additional 56,000 in annual operating costs in order to meet a discharge limit of one part per million (ppm).
One ppm is not yet mandated. Federal guidelines limit sil¬ver discharge to five ppm — though some cities set the limit as low as 0.2 ppm.
The most widely used systems can meet the federal guide-lines. As an example, if the photowaste in question contains 1,000 ppm silver and most of the silver is recovered — say 99-5 percent, the remaining 5 ppm meets the federal discharge limit.
This is where Itronics comes in.
Other companies may have methods for ing silver from spent fix but Itronics is the o: company that consistently achieves 99.99 percent recover}- of sil¬ver and all other toxic metals - thanks to one of several pro¬prietary technolo¬gies developed by company founder and CEO Dr. John Whitney. It means that Itronics is turn-ing more toxic metal into the precious metal it sells on the open market. It is impor¬tant to note that competing sil¬ver recover}- systems capture only silver - any other toxic met¬als are released into the waste stream. Dr. Whitney's technique captures virtually all metals— the resulting liquid when subjected to the EPA's standard test for detection of toxic metals proves toxic metal free.
Recycling silver of course is an earth friendly practice that removes mining pressure. Ironically, it is not out of the ques¬tion that as Itronics develops its collection network, that it could become one of the larger silver producers in the country without disturbing a shovel full of dirt!
Dr. Whitney and his brother Ron founded their original company, Whitney & Whitney, Inc. in Reno. Nevada in the mid 1970s.
The company provided consulting services for the mining industry. A second company that would become Itronics Metallurgical was formed in 1981 — to research ways to separate gold and silver from ore.
Whitney developed Itronics' metal capturing technique in response to a call from the cities of Reno and Sparks for his consulting sendees. The cities had a problem with too much sil¬ver coming out of their sewage plant. Whitney pinpointed used photo chemicals as the source of the contamination. Serendipitously, research he was already doing on removing metals from cyanide solutions convinced him that he had the solution in hand.
"We tried it with the (photochemicals) and it succeeded in a beaker," he told reporters. "That was really the beginning."
Itronics was born in 1987 and began the business of col¬lecting and recovering silver and toxic heavy metals from area photowaste. Within a year Whitney was again approached by city officials who had determined that the waste, even with the heavy metals removed, was still proving toxic to the aquatic environment. Reno's treated waste stream, it should be noted, has to be reintroduced to the Truckee River. The river quickly terminates in the fragile ecolo¬gy of Pyramid Lake from which there is no outlet The city's ecological impact is more immediately apparent - though no more serious than that of other cities across the country.
Whitney scoured patent literature for uses for the metal-free photo liquids. He found three with applications to plant nutrition — suggesting that the liquids might be usable as a fertilizer.
Early testing of the product on turf showed good results, but the liquid had an offensive odor that limited its accept¬ability. Whitney returned to the laboratory and spent
more than a decade arriving at a concentrated form of the product. Amazingly, the finished product proved to be not only a fertilizer, but a superior one.
In effect, Itronics actually makes a liquid base for the fertilizers it produces from the recycled pho¬towaste, then adds additional fertilizer compo¬nents which, while not unique in themselves, are blended into a unique combination of nutrients. Lo-biuret Urea, food grade 10-34-0, low chloride or no chloride potassium mixes and high grade minor elements are combined with the recycled component to provide the grower with nutritional products to achieve enhanced production goals. The recycled component gets much of the credit for the remarkable results the fertilizer achieves. A mixture of chelates that occur naturally in photowaste pro¬mote rapid uptake of nutrients. Thiosulfates are also present to provide needed sulfur. Whitney feels a substantial part of the compound's effectiveness is the result of a synergistic reaction of the chemicals involved.
Chemical explanations aside, the proof is in the pudding. Extensive testing in the field and the results enjoyed by users have clearly demonstrated GOLD'nGRO's value. The original formulation was intended for use on turf grass and was tested for nearly eight years in field applications, mostly at a large turf farm in the Reno area with advice and consultation from sever¬al universities. Then, the product underwent a rigorous study for more than two years by the University of California at Riverside. During the trials involving Tall Fescue, Itronic's fertil¬izer out performed all others in visual quality in the turf.
After investing 12 years and S6 million in research, Itronics was'ready to take GOLD'nGRO nation-wide. In 1998, a distri-bution agreement was signed with a leading California farm ser-vice to sell GOLD'nGRO.
Golf Course Management magazine reported that iron-rich GOLD'nGRO caused greens at Santa Maria Country Club in Santa Maria, Calif, to deepen their color quite rapidly. In fact, one week after he appted the product the club superintendent was approached by the green committee chairman with a request to stop painting or dying the grass. At the environmen¬tally aware Stevinson Ranch Golf Club, they found that an application of GOLD'nGRO provided five to six weeks of good turf color during the winter season. The material they had used previous lasted only three to four weeks. GOLD'nGRO allowed them to eliminate one application.
Itronics quickly introduced an assortment of formulations of GOLD'nGRO — at this writing 11 specialized blends are available. One recent addition, GOLD'nGRO Zinc, has proven immensely beneficial to table grape crops. In one southern California field trial it was reported that "The application pro-duced an increase in berry weight, the grape clusters proved to be more uniform, and there was at least a five percent increase in the number of boxes of grapes produced." The benefit in value to the grower was more than 40 times the cost of the GOLD'nGRO used to produce the increase. The results were in comparison to the grower's normal fer¬tilization program.
Similar results are being reported in field trials involving a number of large acreage crops and chelated, multinutrient-nch formulations of the product. Intense testing anticipates substantial production boosts of 10 to 50 percent in crops as disparate as alfalfa, cotton, table grapes and sweet corn. GOLD'nGRO products are now available in bulk quantities for use on just about any conceivable crop. GOLD'nGRO's distributor is now selling them to the farmers of California, the largest agricultural market in the U-S
While farmers that use the GOLD'nGRO fertilizers quickly become devotees, superior crop production is not the only reason GOLD'nGRO stands to capture a large share of the fertilizer market.
Itronics' products are environmentally clean. Due in part to the company's proprietary technology and because only distilled water is used in the manufacturing process, GOLD'nGRO is indeed toxic metal free. As unbelievable as it may sound, the zinc Itronics uses in its fertilizer con¬tains less lead than a zinc tablet sold in drug and health stores.
Many fertilizers in use today don't come close. The toxic metal content in some is high enough to cause them to be prohibited in landfills and yet they are applied with impunity to America's food crops.
In 2002, California adopted what are hailed as the country's toughest fertilizer regulations. These establish allowable limits for toxic metals permitted in fertilizers, but still didn't ban diem outright. This step in the right direc¬tion drew public attention to the problem and assured that additional legislation will follow. As more farmers strive to bring a more healthful product to market or as increasingly stringent regulation are applied to agricultural chemical use, GOLD'nGRO provides a safe alternative.
Turf, ornamental and house plant blends of GOLD'nGRO, by the way, have been packaged for home¬owners and are available on the company's web site.
The scientific community has embraced Itronics' achievements. Dr. Whitney was selected as Nevada's Inventor of the Year for 2000 and was inducted into the Inventors' Hall of Fame at the University of Nevada, Reno. Itronics was one of five finalists for the 2001 Kirkpatrick Chemical Engineering Award, the most prestigious world¬wide award in chemical engineering technologies.
Itronics continues to increase its lead in the photowaste recycling field. Recently, the company has designed and pro¬duces a vacuum concentrator for placement at the genera¬tor's site. The machines concentrate the used photochemical solutions by 80 to 95 percent for easy transport to the Itronics plant.
Itromc's vacuum concentrators are themselves a study in efficiency. A model designed to handle 50 gallons of photo waste daily has a foot print of 36 by 40 inches and stands about six feet high. It contains two vacuum chambers so that developer and photo fix (and the chemicals in each) can remain separate. 80 percent of the water from the solutions is removed from the chemical mixes by boiling the contents of the chambers then condensing the steam in a cold finger to provide pure distilled water which can be used to make up new photochemicals.
The genius of the machine is that the imposed vacuum conditions allow the water to boil at a very low temperature, about 80 degrees Fahrenheit. Itronic's condenser accom¬plishes this with no heating element. It brings the solutions to this temperature using available heat generated by the cold fingers refrigeration compressor! Thus the condenser not only conserves energy, it emits very little environmental heat.
Most recently Itronics completed a Department of Defense contract for five large vacuum recovery units for use on navy bases - possibly a significant first step toward providing its services to the entire U.S. military.
With a never ending supply of waste, an alchemist like ability to produce silver and an steadily increasing market for clean, effective fertilizer, Itronics is proving that earth-friendly enterprise can be financially profitable too!
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