Processors find reasons to be optimistic about the short- and long-term prospects for the C&D refuse market sector.
MSW managers looking to diversify their businesses should find encouragement in the experiences of several construction and demolition (C&D) material processors around the country who are succeeding for two reasons. First, amid the protracted, severe recession that had begun about 16 months earlier, they were holding their own or even thriving. Second, they were tapping into markets for waste materials, particularly wood, that could power a potentially emerging “green economy” in the years ahead.
Equipment Allows Diversification
Several C&D processors across the country are finding that advances in machinery are allowing them to diversify their operations and separate materials with increasing cost effectiveness.
Terry Gillis, general manager, has found that diversification has paid dividends for Recovery1 of Tacoma, WA. In 1993, the company began operations with the intention of making wood fuel and wood pulp—which owed its high prices to low supplies—for recycled paper manufacturers. Today the company processes about 70,000 tons annually and provides 21 different recycled C&D products for resale, including gypsum for portland cement, bailed plastics, carpet, carpet padding, and cardboard, as well as rocks, bricks, concrete, porcelain, and glass for aggregates.
In mid-2007, in an effort to reduce maintenance and energy-consumption costs, Gillis altered his processes by investing in a new SSI Shredding Systems Pri-Max PR-4000 primary reducer, which is located upstream of Recovery1’s 600-horsepower West Salem Machinery model 5472 vertical feed grinder, also known as a hammermill. Previously, the company employed one 1,000-horsepower swing-hammer hog mill, and counting so much on that one machine resulted in high operating costs, says Gillis.
The low-speed, high-torque Pri-Max PR-4000 operates at a typical speed of about 58 rpm, compared with a typical 1,000 rpm in the hammermill. During primary reduction, most steel pieces that would damage machinery are liberated from the feed and captured by an overhead magnet, and the material is conveyed across a short sorting line and under a magnetic head pulley and then into the hammermill for final grinding. Gillis points out that a magnetic excavator attachment and a reverse gear on the Pri-Max machine also keep steel infeed to the processing machinery at a minimum. The Pri-Max PR-4000 has taken stress off of the hammermill and allowed the company to start recycling railroad ties, which often contain steel spikes or even rail pieces, says Gillis. The machine, which processes up to 75 tons per hour, also reduces the amount of time that excavator operators spend breaking up large material and provides a more even flow of material. Material is fed into the hammermill via an infeed chute and drops into the grinding chamber. A massive rotor assembly with 27 swing hammers weighing 150 pounds each that are equipped with reversible and replaceable tips crushes the material against a crushing door, shears it against an anvil, and then drags it over modular screen grates resulting in typical reductions to about 18 inches.
“Going with a two-stage system has resulted in a significantly lower electric bill as well as a significantly lower maintenance bill,” he says. The new equipment configuration has also reduced the company’s power costs by about 20%. “We used to calculate that if we ground material for an hour, then we would weld on our hammer mill for an hour.” He points out that the hammer mill’s infeed conveyor has a ballistics chute attachment that is designed to remove large tramp metal material out of the grinding. Two magnets downstream of the hammermill also minimize steel commingling with other materials.
Other equipment in the operation includes a two-stage WSM 72-15 disc screen from West Salem Machinery that provides final material sizing. Gillis notes that the screen was built to company specifications for its desired mulch particle size of 3-inch nominal. Oversized particles are taken off of the screen and conveyed back to the hammermill. “A disc screen has a free flow so air can flow up through it much more easily than I perceive an oscillating screen or vibratory screen can do, and we get really good pickup of material we don’t want in our wood product,” says Gillis. “I don’t ask my guys on the sort line to pick out that small plastic and stuff; I just say let it go and the equipment pulls it out.” Recovery1 also operates two non-blinding bivi-Tec screens from Aggregates Equipment Inc.: one for dirt and one for gypsum. An oscillating BM&M wood fiber screen and a trommel screen built by the company itself round out Recovery1’s equipment lineup.
Recovery1 primarily serves three markets with its wood products. For landscapers who sell mulch, the company operates a mulch colorizing system that dyes chips dark walnut, black, or red. Wood chips are used for fuel in plants such as paper mills and cement kilns. A major customer for wood pulp, Cascade Pacific Pulp of Halsey, OR, provides paper companies with recycled wood pulp. A future market for Recovery1’s wood products is particle board if and when local plants open in the company’s area.
Similarly, diversification is a key strategy at Shamrock Recycling & Transfer in Blaine, MN. In 2008, the company processed about 80,000 tons of various materials, including wood, concrete, cardboard, copper, aluminum, steel, alternative daily cover (ADC) for landfills, compost, concrete, cardboard, plastics, electronics, sheetrock, tires, and roof shingles. Uses for the wood include boiler fuel, landscape mulch, and animal bedding. Cardboard and paper are sent back to paper mills and turned into new products. Farmers use ground-up sheetrock to replace nutrients in soil, although regulators recently have begun to closely scrutinize the potential for wet sheetrock material to release hydrogen sulfide gas, which can be toxic at high concentrations.
Rich Gersdorf, co-owner, founded the company with his wife Becky in 2003 as a natural extension of a hauling company that faced high landfill tipping fees. The company receives materials from its own roll-offs and from other haulers, contractors, and the public.
Commingled material is dumped at the front of the 20,000-square-foot facility and weighed before a front-end loader stockpiles the material for an excavator. The excavator feeds a hopper on a Continental Biomass Industries Annihilator shredding machine that sizes material for a sorting line. The shredder has a 6-inch forged steel, 20,000-pound rotor with reversible tips and an 8,000-pound, hydraulically actuated anvil door with a remote-controlled, adjustable cutting gap. “[The shredder] just makes it into a size that you can work with,” says Gersdorf. “For example, a 12-foot two-by-six is hard to maneuver compared with four 3-foot pieces. We typically like to size material to 12 to 18 inches.”
Following primary reduction by the Annihilator, the material is conveyed to a sorting line, where 12–15 laborers separate large pieces into containers that feed concrete bins located down on the main level. The remaining smaller material undergoes metal removal via a magnet and particles smaller than 1 inch are screened out and used for ADC. On the main level, a front-end loader loads trucks that deliver the larger pieces to customers that sell scrap material or manufacture recycled products.
New England Recycling, Paunton, MA, processes any material found on a job site, according to Paul Correia, facilities manager. The company handles about 100,000 tons of wood, plastic, sheetrock, steel, and any other materials yielded on a commercial or residential construction site and that total does not even include concrete. For reducing materials other than concrete, the company uses a Continental Biomass Industries 4872 Grizzly Mill.
Correia reports that about 30% of the company’s total volume is wood used for boiler fuel. Wood chips that are too small for fuel are used for ADC. Processing sheetrock poses a challenge due to the hydrogen-sulfide gas issue. “That’s rough because it can’t be painted; it has to be new, and it has to be dry,” he says. “Only about 2% of what we do ends up being recycled.” To keep the material dry and less susceptible to hydrogen-sulfide gas formation and release, “We try to tell our customers to keep all of their dry, clean cutoffs toward the end or beginning of the can—either end; it doesn’t matter to us—then when we get it, we push it off to the side, and we have a couple of guys who pick it off by hand.”
When loads are dumped onto the floor at the company’s facility, Correia says, large pieces are manually sorted. Next the remaining material is conveyed to a half-inch trommel screen and then loaded onto another belt, and a sorting crew averaging about 24 workers separates the individual materials, feeding individual hoppers at the top of chutes feeding bins below. Bulky trash, cardboard, aggregates, steel, aluminum, and wood are sorted in order.
United Recycling Co. of Snohomish, WA, has found high-speed, high-torque machinery suitable for primary reduction of its feed material, which is often commingled with metals. The company, which serves the Seattle to Everett region and processes about 250,000 tons annually—primarily wood and plastics—relies on a CW Mill Equipment HogZilla TC II 1564 tub grinder to limit damage to the machine from tramp steel. Dan McAuliffe, president, notes that even if a large piece of metal such as plate steel or even an engine crankshaft gets caught in the machine, it does not cause damage. “You’re going to get metal hangers, nails, nail plates, hinges, and bolts, and this grinder just eats them,” he says.
The TC series tub grinder has a torque converter drive that is designed to allow the engine to perform at peak efficiency with multiplied torque. Originally designed for use in rock crushing, the torque converter drive allows the engine to operate near governed speed throughout the work cycle regardless of load requirements and prevents engine damage from shock and loads from torsion. The TC series also has an adjustable swing hammer mill assembly configured to allow the operator to adjust the depth of cut, in contrast to single swing grinders that have a permanently set depth of cut. The manufacturer says that this assembly allows variable processing aggressiveness, greater productivity, and higher resale value.
“I’ve been doing this for a long time, and before that I was in the sand and gravel and concrete industry and so I know equipment pretty well all the way around,” McAuliffe says. “[The tub grinder] is high horsepower and high speed. We load a 150-yard trailer in less than 10 minutes. There are high-torque, low-speed machines, which are better for contaminated material, but it means what it says: low speed. On this machine, the conveyors are built the way the sand and gravel industry’s would be—sand and gravel uses all-roller conveyors, heavy-duty shafts, heavy-duty pulleys, and heavy-duty sprockets. McAuliffe adds that maintenance is relatively easy because in many cases replacing a bolt substitutes for welding.
United Recycling provides several local paper companies with wood chips to fuel their cogeneration plants. McAuliffe adds that the company can use all of the other materials produced in demolition of a building, including a home’s concrete foundation, which is recycled using a Powerscreen crusher.
As with Shamrock, cost considerations motivated Oberlin Farms Demolition and Recycling of Stryker, OH, to launch a C&D processing operation in August 2008. A demolition contracting company spawned from the core agricultural business in 2003 had been hit hard by fuel costs inherent in transporting its material to landfills up to 30 miles away, explains Scott Oberlin, owner and president. [The revenue stream] was probably the main driver,” says Oberlin.
In 2008, the company processed about 20,000 tons of wood and 80,000 tons of concrete. Oberlin says that the company processes C&D material from construction sites, as well as tree limbs from cities, counties, townships, and residents.
For most material, aside from concrete, Oberlin uses a Bandit Industries 3680 Beast Recycler, which has a theoretical production rate of 500 yards or more per hour. Oberlin reports that the operation uses the machine for wood and asphalt shingles. After these materials are reduced by the machine’s carbide-teeth-equipped rotary grinding wheel, they are screened and nails are magnetically separated from them. Oberlin sells colorized mulch to landscapers and homeowners. Concrete is processed by an Extec I-C13 crusher and used for backfill or roadway base material.
High Diversion Rates
Gillis harbors no illusions in regard to his responsibility to ensure the ecological inertness of Recovery1’s processed materials. He says that C&D material providers must have had the Asbestos Hazard Emergency Response Act (AHERA) inspection done on their material and provide the company with that documentation and ensure that the material has no lead-based paint. “We’re real sticklers on that—we have five certified AHERA inspectors on staff,” says Gillis.
Recovery1’s 16-year average diversion rate is 98.33%, Gillis reports, adding that the US Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) requirements drive the high diversion rate. “[Customers] love bringing material to us because of our high diversion rate, and that helps them with their LEED goals,” Gillis says. “Unfortunately, the US Green Building Council does not certify processes—it accepts our numbers because we do detailed reporting to the Washington State Department of Ecology and our local jurisdictional health department. There really is no check and balance that legitimizes recycling—you pretty much can put down whatever you want and nobody has knocked on my door yet and said, Hey, prove your numbers; we’re going to audit your operation.”
Gillis says he wishes that regulators would audit the company’s materials. The company received a 2007 Green Globe award from the state and the Construction Materials Recycling Association’s Mixed C&D Recycling Facility of the Year award in 2008.
McAuliffe reports that United Recycling also has a high diversion rate: nearly 93%, compared with a required 90%. “Everything that comes in our gate and goes out of our gate hits the scale,” he says. “In order to get an accurate diversion rate, everything has to be weighed.”
Impact of Recession
Several C&D processors and other industry experts report that the severe recession that began in December 2007 has not brought business to a halt. Many companies are faring well, particularly ones that are focusing their efforts on supplying a green economy.
McAuliffe says that United Recycling has the luxury of being able to aggressively pursue more sales during economic downturns.
Customers of Oberlin Farms Demolition and Recycling are feeling the cost crunch of high landfill tipping fees, and behaving predictably, says Oberlin.
“Actually, we’re getting more business than our business plan projected because we’re the alternative to a higher price of [landfilling] material, and if people need stuff they’re going to come to us because we’re a lower price than virgin material,” he says. “Our tipping fees are about $1 a ton, compared with about $40 a ton at the landfill. It’s making projects more cost effective because they’re reducing their tipping fees, plus they’re reducing their cost of material with used backfill—by 50% in a lot of cases.”
Correia relates that New England Recycling has been hit fairly hard by the downturn because most of its customer base consists of residential contractors.
“We’ve shifted gears and gone into more commercial properties being built or remodeled,” Correia says. “We’ve gotten more into the remodeling end of it rather than the new construction end of it.” This change has yielded less wood and more steel, he adds. “There’s less wood. With a new house, the wood cutoffs are pretty new wood. But most of the stuff from remodeling projects is just being used as boiler fuel. We do pick some clean wood for mulches, but it has slowed down.”
Gersdorf has experienced a similar impact from the decline of the residential sector. “That market sector has gone away,” he says. “It’s nonexistent right now and so obviously it affects all of our businesses in one form or another. But the commercial sector has been a pretty strong market the past couple years so, it’s really offset the decline in housing.”
One market that could give C&D processors a boost during the recession is waste-to-energy (WTE), according to Ed Donovan, general sales manager for Continental Biomass Industries, a major equipment supplier for both New England Recycling and Shamrock. Donovan notes that he has noticed more interest in the manufacturer’s shredders from companies that are starting to serve this market niche and adds that a green economy bodes well for C&D.
Specifically, any recycling market that generates alternative fuels appears to be strong in areas that are being set up to utilize those fuels, argues Brian Bergman, operations manager for CW Mill Equipment. He adds that machine versatility, which allows more profitable operation, currently is at a premium as well.
Terri Ward, who works in system sales for SSI Shredding Systems, notes growing interest in generating alternative fuel products from residual material—what is left over once recyclable materials are removed—not just from woodwaste. When sized correctly, this material can be utilized by cement kilns, pulp and paper mills, and gasifiers, Ward notes.
In addition, more SSI customers are inquiring about equipment that can convert other remaining materials, such as mattresses, appliances, and tires, into something usable. For example, waste carpet is now being shredded and remarketed to companies that incorporate it into industrial absorbents or reclaim the calcium carbonate backing and use the balance for fuel. The old adage of “location, location, location” is a key factor for C&D processors during the downturn; she adds that many geographically well-positioned companies are flourishing. More demolition contractors are launching their own recycling facilities, Ward notes.
Michael Kvach, vice president of sales for Peterson Pacific Corp., concurs that the green economy, boosted by economic stimulus plan funding, offers C&D processors new opportunities. Kvach says that processing difficult feedstock for landfill reduction and use as fuel for energy is on the rise. Interest in recycled asphalt shingles also continues to grow, especially with an elevated price of asphalt cement, he adds.
“We’ve seen a downturn on both the residential and commercial sides,” says Gillis. “We’re constantly seeking out higher-end-value uses for our materials, and we’re finding a lot of interest in what we do,” he says, sharing an example of a potential cement manufacturer customer that had recycled gypsum tested in a large quantity, with positive results. “So these are challenging times, but challenging times aren’t necessarily bad times—they’re just different.
“At the end of the day, in this recycling community, it’s product out the back end of the plant. Building piles isn’t recycling. Making products that have value in the marketplace—that’s what recycling is all about.”