Waste Management Opens C&D MRF in Southern California
Executives from Waste Management Inc. (WMI) and business and community environmental leaders from the San Diego area joined to unveil a construction and demolition processing and recycling center in El Cajon, Calif. The facility will recover and process up to 130,000 tons of commercial construction debris, as well as traditional recyclables, annually.
WMI estimates that C&D accounts for more than 22 percent of the overall waste stream in California, 35 percent of the waste at Miramar Landfill, more than 100,000 tons annually for the unincorporated areas of the county and more than 1 million tons countywide.
"We have provided C&D collection services to developers since the ’70s. With the new sort line, we can take it to the next level and help contractors actually recycle these materials as opposed to simply hauling them to the landfill," says Carl Scherbaum, WMI of San Diego district manager.
"This investment into San Diego’s green infrastructure not only demonstrates our long-term commitment to recycling in San Diego, but also reaffirms our strong belief that green solutions make good business sense, even in this economy," Scherbaum adds.
Lubo USA, headquartered in Stamford, Conn., supplied the sorting equipment, which represents a $7 million investment.
Bayshore Recycling to Upgrade Mixed C&D Facility
New Jersey-based Montecalvo Disposal Services Inc. (MDS) and sister company Bayshore Recycling Corp. are installing a custom-designed mixed C&D recycling system made by Quebec-based Erin Recycling.
The new dual-line system, which features a combination of Erin Fingerscreeners, air density and magnetic separation equipment, will automate a significant portion of the material separation functions at Bayshore’s Keasbey, N.J., location.
"We’ve had a concerted C&D recovery effort in place since 1995, so we are anything but strangers to that market," says Valerie Montecalvo, Bayshore’s president. "Over the years, however, markets have changed, volumes have increased and new technology has evolved. We’ve been looking not only to respond to those changes but to anticipate what might lie ahead. The Erin recycling system, by nature of its design, will allow us to do that."
Adds Frank Montecalvo, Bayshore vice president, "The goals for our C&D operation have always centered around three key points: making on-site collection of debris simpler for our customers, maximizing recovery from the C&D waste stream, and minimizing the volumes headed to our landfill. We see Erin’s recycling system doing all that, and more, for us."
MDS’s C&D recycling system will be designed to handle the company’s permitted volumes of 1,000 tons per day, but, according to James Bray, the company’s director of C&D operations, specific elements of the system will allow for future growth.
"Currently we have nine primary products that we recover on a regular basis," he says. "However, this system was designed with multiple sorting stations so we can increase volumes of specific products as the market dictates."
By automating the C&D debris recycling process, Bray says MDS will be able to not only process additional volumes, but also recover a greater percentage of the recyclable material it handles through its Keasbey plant.
Explore the August 2009 Issue
Check out more from this issue and find your next story to read.
Latest from Recycling Today
- ReElement, Posco partner to develop rare earth, magnet supply chain
- Comau to take part in EU’s Reinforce project
- Sustainable packaging: How do we get there?
- ReMA accepts Lifetime Achievement nominations
- ExxonMobil will add to chemical recycling capacity
- ESAB unveils new cutting torch models
- Celsa UK assets sold to Czech investment fund
- EPA releases ‘National Strategy to Prevent Plastic Pollution’
