Bridging the Knowledge Gaps

While Chinese New Year celebrations and exquisite seafood offerings at Fisherman’s Wharf provided plenty of social opportunities, timely presentations followed by lively question-and-answer sessions kept the attendees focused on industry matters (during the daylight hours, anyway.)

Displays of products and services presented by nearly two dozen exhibiting companies also allowed attendees to gather new information affecting the day-to-day operations of concrete/asphalt crushers, wood grinders, mixed C&D debris recyclers, and building materials re-use practitioners.

HIGH-VOLUME BENCHMARKS

Three speakers at the CMRA event described their high-volume recycling operations for attendees. Louis Vinagro of N.E.E.D. Inc., Johnston, R.I., gave a thorough overview of his sprawling mixed C&D debris recycling complex, while Rick Givan of Recycled Materials Co. Inc., Arvada, Colo., described the massive concrete recycling task underway at the former Stapleton Airport in Denver. Bob Adcock of Angelo’s Crushed Concrete, Warren, Mich., also described that company’s multi-state secondary aggregates business.

Vinagro’s N.E.E.D. Inc. has become one of the 100 largest privately owned companies in Rhode Island. The facility accepts truckloads of C&D debris, charging haulers on a sliding scale depending on the segregation quality and “cleanliness” of the loads.

Vinagro essentially competes with, and is directly across the street from, the only licensed landfill in Rhode Island, which is run by the state.

“I couldn’t get a landfill license from the state, so that’s how I became one of the leading C&D recyclers,” Vinagro quipped. His joking aside, Vinagro stated several times that he takes the environmental and sustainability aspects of what his business is accomplishing seriously.

Through a series of sorting and separation processes, combined with a willingness to try new marketing ideas, Vinagro estimates that he is able to recycle 70% of the material that comes through his gates, including metals, concrete, asphalt, brick and block, paper and some plastics, and most wood.

But most of the other 30% is not landfilled. Rather it is stored in cells that may look like landfill cells, but instead act as holding areas for soil and other fines that are eventually re-processed and sold as topsoil or landfill covering material.

N.E.E.D. has distinguished itself in two ways: by the sheer volume of material it takes in, and by its willingness to experiment with new and different end markets.

For some examples on the volume side, on peak days N.E.E.D. is producing 10 to 20 tons per hour of mulch and is baling eight to 12 tons per hour of newspapers (adding up to 3,000 tons of newspapers per year, plus 4,000 tons per year of cardboard that is baled).

N.E.E.D. has increased its volume while also entering into a number of side businesses. The company processes recyclables collected from 16 commingled municipal contracts, while an oil filter recycling venture brings in ferrous scrap as well as enough recycled oil to produce two barrels of oil per hour. Other businesses Vinagro and N.E.E.D. have entered or considered include using geothermal heat, producing ethanol fuel and making plastic lumber products.

Finding end markets for the large volume of wood that comes into his facility has been another focus of Vinagro’s. He says perseverance has been a necessary trait in this endeavor.

Creating the Mother’s Natural Products brand name for many of the products, N.E.E.D. makes pressed wood fire logs, wood pellets for home heating units, and colored mulch and other landscaping products.

Vinagro says he has discovered a “booming market” for the pellets and logs made from his sawdust and small wood particles. While these branded products have helped diversify N.E.E.D.’s end market for wood, Vinagro also noted that 70% of the wood that comes in still goes to the larger, industrial biomass fuel market.

Vinagro’s message to attendees was to always pay attention to end markets. “There is no end to what I could spend” on research and processing machinery, he remarked. But without the end markets to sell into, even the best recycling processes will not make economic sense.

MAJOR LEAGUE CRUSHING

Two other speakers were of particular interest to attendees in the secondary aggregates business.

Rick Givan of Recycled Materials Co. Inc., Arvada, Colo., spoke on the subject of using recycled concrete as an aggregate for new concrete. During the presentation, Givan referred often to the massive concrete and asphalt recycling task under way at Denver’s former Stapleton Airport, which is undergoing a multi-year demolition process.

According to Givan, Recycled Materials Co. is the concrete recycling contractor on site at the 4,700 acre Stapleton project. The company has been permitted for and has signed a 10-year lease to operate on a 110-acre parcel of the airport. The company operates a fixed-site two-stage crushing plant and other crushing units at the airport.

Givan estimates six million tons of concrete and treated base at the airport will be recycled. On the thick runways, an eight-ton guillotine “gate breaker” is used to make the initial breaks in the concrete before it can be fed to the crushing system.

“This is the largest recycling project of its kind,” said Givan. “We have essentially created an urban quarry.”

Much of the material is being used on site as fill at the former airport land as it is re-developed for mixed residential, recreational and office park land. “Some of it is used on-site as redevelopment occurs, but we still have to aggressively market materials,” says Givan.

The company has worked with the Colorado School of Mines and with paving contractors to test recycled concrete as an aggregate mix. Givan noted that one company is blending recycled concrete in a 50-50 mix with virgin aggregates and that “their reports are that it is exceeding expectations.”

Bob Adcock of Angelo’s Crushed Concrete also noted that in 1987 a stretch of Detroit freeway was paved with ready-mix pavement containing 100% recycled concrete as its aggregate. “It is one of the first projects I’m aware of that used 100% crushed concrete,” he noted.

According to Adcock, the stretch of highway “has 13 years on it, and it’s holding up tremendously well.” Nonetheless, the State of Michigan is still examining it. “We’re hoping they’ll approve it for future use,” says Adcock.

On a gloomier note, Adcock noted that new federal Superpave regulations bring the approved amount of asphalt that can be used in some mixes from 50% to 20%, making it tougher to find a home for asphalt. He added that some customers were being turned away from dumping asphalt onto Angelo’s “growing pile” of the material.

While Angelo’s Crushed Concrete is based in Michigan as a sister company to road contractor Iafrate Inc., the company has followed Iafrate into several other states to set up crushing operations, becoming a multi-location large-volume recycler.