New Heights in C&D Recycling

Construction and demolition debris recycling is still a relatively new field. While many C&D recyclers operate as part of a landfill or demolition firm and only process a clean stream of materials such as concrete, a few independent processors of mixed C&D debris are forging a new path. One of the oldest of these mixed material processors is Delaware Valley Recycling, Philadelphia.

Delaware Valley was formed in 1989 as a joint venture between Haines & Kibblehouse, Skippack, Pa., and Geppert Bros. Inc., Colmar, Pa., two Philadelphia-area demolition contractors. The two companies saw a potential niche in both providing a less expensive alternative to landfilling bulky C&D debris, and saving landfill space at a time when concern about landfills reaching capacity was at a peak.

But the road to recycling mixed C&D debris efficiently and profitably has been somewhat rocky, according to Jack Kibblehouse, president of Haines & Kibblehouse, and part owner of Delaware Valley. "It certainly hasn’t been as prosperous as we had hoped it would be," he admits. "We had several things against us. Most importantly, the local landfill tipping fees came down, so in order to compete, we weren’t able to charge the tipping fee at the recycling center that we had planned."

Delaware Valley charges a tipping fee for recyclable materials, banking on having a lower rate than local landfills. The tipping fee varies, depending on the classification of the material. Although the recycling company’s operations have been modified for optimum efficiency, it has not yet made a profit and is still subsidized, to some extent, by its parent companies.

"Landfill tipping fees have gone from about $50 or $60 a ton, in the year that we were setting the company up, down to in the range of $30 a ton," says Kibblehouse. "In some cases, that $30 includes trucking to the landfill. That really limits the margins you can work with."

Despite this obstacle, Delaware Valley has one major advantage – its location within a fairly large city, close to urban demolition jobs.

"Our idea was to set this up in the city close to where the material was being generated so that demolition contractors besides ourselves would have a place nearby for tipping," he says. "Also, we can supply the concrete we recycle to customers in the city, who then save on trucking costs they would have incurred hauling the same materials from a facility in the countryside. That part of it has worked out fairly well."

Indeed, the company is doing a substantial amount of business. Delaware Valley is processing about 200,000 tons of material a year, and is probably the largest C&D recycler in the Mid-Atlantic region, according to Bill Hedl, the company’s business and sales manager. "Pennsylvania and New Jersey are our main markets, but we do some business in Delaware," he explains.

Delaware Valley accepts loads of mixed materials, including brick, block, concrete, asphalt, metal and roofing shingles, from demolition contractors and from smaller generators who bring in roll-off containers full of material. Currently, the company has between 150 and 200 regular customers.

"We have guys that come in here with small pickup trucks, all the way up to 50-yard demolition trailers, and we recycle what we can," says Hedl. "Out of the material that comes in, I’d say 85 percent of it is recycled. The other 15 percent of C&D that you can’t recycle – materials such as creosote – we send to a C&D landfill."

After entering the facility, mixed C&D materials are fed into the primary crusher. From there, crushed materials proceed to the picking station, where manual sorters remove metals and sometimes wet wood. In addition, numerous magnets on the system pull out metal and rebar, which is sold to local scrap yards.

Leaving the picking station, materials are conveyed up and over a screen deck and into a flotation system. Wood floats to the top, and "hard goods" such as concrete, brick and block sink to the bottom.

The hard goods then proceed to a secondary crusher and are reduced to an inch and a half minus size, which is sold for uses such as subbase in roads. Delaware Valley sells in excess of 150,000 tons a year of this product, according to Hedl. Markets for the material are currently strong, he says. "On commercial applications, crushed concrete does a fantastic job. You won’t find a better product for good compaction."

Separated wood debris, such as brush, stumps, logs and pallets, is sent through a primary shredder, where it is reduced to a 6-inch chip. From there it goes over a trommel screen, and fines are separated. Larger materials continue on to a tub grinder, and then through another screening process. The end result is three different sizes of chips.

"The middle sized chip right now is not a big mover for us, so we’re expanding our wood operation by adding another tub grinder onto the end of that middle sized chip belt, and we’re going to grind it down into a finer product," says Hedl.

The wood chips are sold for use in composting, landscaping, mulching and fuel. "We probably sell about 60,000 cubic yards of wood chips a year," he adds.

The company has met with numerous fuel plants interested in buying wood chips, but there are currently regulations limiting the use of C&D wood as fuel, says Hedl. The landscape market, however, is strong, and Delaware Valley sells about 35,000 cubic yards of wood chips into that market annually.

Delaware Valley used to sell wood chips for use as a drying agent for sewage sludge at processing plants located near the Philadelphia airport, but these plants inexplicably began buying virgin materials at three times the price, says Hedl. "Everything was working well, and then they switched, without explanation," he says. "It was a large market outlet. Currently, there is only one facility that we ship chips to for sludge bulking."

The company has investigated the possibility of selling its wood chips into a new kind of end market, such as a particle board plant. However, there are currently none close enough to justify the cost of shipping the material, says Kibblehouse. "With a low cost item such as this, your trucking sometimes is a lot more than what your product is worth," he says.

So far, the company has been able to find markets for all the wood and aggregate products it has produced, says Kibblehouse. But currently fewer materials are being processed through the plant because the market has slowed – in part, due to winter conditions.

"We are working a single 10-hour shift now," he says. "When business was better here in the area, we were running a double shift operation. But the construction sector has slowed, and that’s where a lot of our material comes from."

Although some builders and local transportation officials have been known to reject recycled materials, this has not been a problem for Delaware Valley, says Kibblehouse. But it is important to meet the customers’ specifications.

"Depending on what your incoming material is, sometimes it’s very tough to keep every speck and splinter of wood out of the aggregate," he explains. "In certain markets, that’s fine. Other markets require us to put additional pickers on the line to keep these splinters, some the size of half a toothpick, out of the end product."

One technical challenge Delaware Valley faces is that concrete is often mixed with wood, and if the wood is saturated with water coming in, it sinks to the bottom of the flotation tanks with the hard goods rather than floating to the top with the dry wood. "So you’ll always have some labor costs in hand-picking particles out of this material," says Kibblehouse.

The company’s end products are thoroughly tested to ensure they are not contaminated.

"We have a consulting engineering firm that comes in and tests the products that we put back out on the road or on the ground for metals or other contaminants," says Hedl. "A lot of this stuff goes to school playgrounds and other sensitive locations. So environmentally, we’re constantly keeping an eye on the materials that we ship."

Materials that are obviously contaminated when they come into the facility – such as wood treated with creosote or painted – are immediately separated and shipped back out to a C&D landfill without processing, Hedl explains. Two workers, one at the scale house and one near the tipping area, inspect incoming trucks for problem materials such as asbestos, which the facility is not permitted to handle. Those materials are placed in a special area for nonrecyclables and are shipped back out.

In addition, painted wood that makes it through the primary crusher is manually separated and sent to a landfill.

Dust control is probably the largest environmental issue facing Delaware Valley, says Hedl.

"We have a water truck that runs through the facility constantly during operating hours to keep the dust down," he says.

This does not cause water runoff problems, he says, as everything is self-contained on the site. "About 60 percent of the site is on blacktop," he says. "And all the materials we bring in that are regulated sit on a concrete pad."

Pennsylvania is becoming more business friendly, says Hedl, and the state’s Department of Environmental Regulation is now working side by side with businesses rather than taking an adversarial position.

Nevertheless, C&D landfills in Pennsylvania are already regulated and must be lined. And C&D landfills in the southern U.S. are now facing increased regulation, as well, he says. "The prices are increasing for disposal, because now they’re forcing them to line the landfills down there. Regulations on the state level are forcing these people to become more environmentally safe as far as disposing of these materials. And that trend will probably continue."

There has been an increase in the amount of C&D debris recycled during the past few years, says Hedl. "Everyone wants to do what’s best for the environment," he says. "You see an increase, and our numbers definitely show that. But there’s no legislative pressure whatsoever, it’s more people wanting to be able to say they participate in recycling programs in their business."

More demolition contractors are recycling materials, agrees Kibblehouse. In fact, Haines & Kibblehouse does some recycling on its job sites with a portable crusher, which in some cases is more cost-effective than hauling the materials to Delaware Valley. But there is definitely a future for mixed C&D recycling facilities, he says, although it may take some time for such facilities to become firmly established.

Haines & Kibblehouse, founded in 1967, is a large firm involved in a number of different areas, including demolition, land clearing, site excavation, utility work, paving, concrete curbing work, aggregate mining and site finishing. Geppert Bros. has been in business longer, but it is slightly less diversified than Haines & Kibblehouse, focusing primarily on the demolition business along with some hauling and trucking.

The two companies were a good fit for the C&D recycling partnership, says Kibblehouse, as both are located in the Philadelphia region, and the two companies had known each other and worked together in the local chapter of the National Association of Demolition Contractors for many years.

"We bid against them very often then and we still do," he says. "But we’re always friendly with them, and we thought going into something like this was something you should do in a combined effort rather than singly."

The principals of the two companies looked at C&D recycling systems across the U.S. and in Europe to find a suitable system, says Kibblehouse, and settled on a Hazemag system that had been operating successfully in Europe for several years.

"We use some of the concrete ourselves," he says, "so we wanted to make sure we were crushing the concrete with the wood product. We also wanted to be able to handle demolition wood and material like stumps."

The two companies’ experience in the demolition business helped in developing the recycling company, says Kibblehouse. "Our experience with quarrying, using crushers and screens, before going into the C&D was a help to us," he says.

Some other C&D recyclers in the U.S. are able to find a use for their end products by siting their facilities next to landfills and using the recycled aggregate as road base in the landfill. Delaware Valley is doing well marketing its products, considering that it doesn’t have access to such a built-in market, says Kibblehouse.

"We’ve improved on that – right now we’re shipping an order of about 30,000 tons into the Philadelphia Airport for use in some of their roadways, so it’s a market independent of our company," he says.

Delaware Valley has handled a number of large jobs in Philadelphia, such as processing significant amounts of the debris from the demolition of the city’s old stadium, says Kibblehouse – a demolition job not handled by either Haines & Kibblehouse or Geppert Bros. "We’ve also processed materials from a number of industrial and commercial buildings and housing projects," he says.

Delaware Valley’s business philosophy stresses teamwork and open communication, says Hedl. In addition, the company is flexible and open to new ideas that might result in increased profits.

"We don’t turn our heads or say no to anything that might make the operation better or more efficient," he says. "We’re always looking at new ways to make ourselves better or make a better end product."

To be successful in the C&D recycling business, adds Kibblehouse, the most important element is to be in an area where you can charge a reasonable tipping fee.

"You have to have the tipping fee coming in – you can’t expect to make your profit off the product you’re selling in the back end," he says. "That you should almost look at as a bonus."

Another part of the company’s philosophy is a strong hands-on involvement by management, says Kibblehouse.

"I’ve been quite involved, and we get together with the Gepperts at least once a month to discuss the business," he says. "We’re a hands-on company in anything that we do."

Kibblehouse says he can’t predict when the company will finally hold its own and turn a profit, but he says it depends partly on the economy. "And we are looking into changing some things around to make it better," he says. "Basically it will be in some of the ways we’re processing material. We may also get into processing some new products – other types of C&D debris – that we’re not processing now."

The author is editor of Recycling Today.