50 Rules for 50 States

The political landscape is filled with people who distrust too much central authority resting in the hands of the federal government, and the government at times provides ammunition for this point of view.

C&D recyclers don’t have to look past the U.S. EPA’s recent lead-based paint regulations to find a loaded weapon that was aimed at them. The rules nearly sailed through the “comment period” after an EPA mailing to concerned parties failed to include most construction and demolition materials generators or processors.

But in other instances, often involving standardization and uniformity, compelling arguments can be made in support of federal or central sets of rules. For makers of aggregate products made from crushed concrete and asphalt, such standardization offers the potential for a better system than the one that currently exists. The other possibility—in the “be careful of what you ask for, you just might get it” category—is that national secondary aggregates standards would wipe out gains made on a state-by-state basis for the use of recycled concrete and asphalt in road building applications.

Currently, makers of secondary crushed concrete or asphalt products operating in more than one state have to become familiar with the approved uses of the product in each state they operate. This may not be terribly burdensome for a company owner doing business in just two states. But for any company expanding into different states or located in, say, New England, where several states are within the same market region, the shifting standards become troublesome.

States with a lack of quarry-produced aggregates, such as Florida and Louisiana, have been the most willing to expand the types of applications into which secondary aggregates can be used, and in increasing the percentage of recycled material included in certain applications.

Seemingly, most or all of what works in one state should work throughout the U.S. But one of the reasons national standards might prove difficult to agree upon is because of the inherent differences in materials used from region to region. Just as differences in quarried material changes the way concrete and asphalt are made from one state to another (or even in different parts of the same state), crushed concrete can have vastly different properties from one geological region to another. The legitimate concern, then, is that any nationwide standards for the use of recycled concrete or asphalt will almost always lean toward the “safest” applications, while prohibiting methods that may work well in many parts of the country.

The industry might be best off emulating the progress that has been achieved in some states, and gathering the knowledge and information learned there to begin influencing decision-makers in other states. Concrete recyclers in those “other” states often site strong quarried aggregates lobbies as one factor holding up the implementation of friendlier standards, but inertia or a lack of interest/urgency by lawmakers in these states is just as frequently mentioned.

Perhaps the presentation of enough compelling, well-documented examples of recycled aggregates at work will help cure some of the inertia.