Pondview Recycling seeks mixed C&D debris recycling revenue at the front gate and with finished products.
Don’t tell Ken Foley that mixed C&D recycling is a low-end commodity business just barely removed from land filling.
“We have $750,000 worth of equipment to accept C&D materials for sorting and processing, and several different products that we get from the stream,” notes Foley, owner of Pondview Recycling, East Providence, R.I.
Foley has spent much of the past three years building a C&D recycling business to operate in tandem with his excavating and roll-off hauling businesses. In that time, he has found that the right mix of equipment, tipping fee rates and end product marketing can make the recycling of construction and demolition materials a “green” activity not only in the environmental sense, but also in terms of revenues.
Permission to Start
Ken Foley has seemingly always worn at least two hats, and worked a variety of jobs (often more than one at a time) before he started his own excavating company in 1985.
“I was a UPS (United Parcel Service) driver for 20 years,” remarks Foley, “but I always wanted to be my own boss. I worked on the side for contractors during those years, and I also had 85 acres where I grew Christmas trees.”
After successfully guiding his excavating firm through its first dozen years and starting a portable concrete crushing business, Foley entered the roll-off container placement business in 1997. “At the same time, I put in for an application for a permit to recycle,” he says. It took Foley more than three years to obtain the permit from state and local regulatory authorities who scrutinized every aspect of the plans and operations.
“It’s very tough to get permits in Rhode Island,” he comments. “They’re strict, and inspectors are here once or twice each month. They’re out there on every nook and cranny of the property and turning over every stone.” Foley says the company has had one or two “minor write-ups,” but overall has maintained a good record with the state.
Both the roll-off and recycling businesses quickly gained momentum for Foley. “I had great rapport with general contractors through my excavating business,” he remarks. Pondview now has some 250 containers placed at job sites at any given time, according to Foley. “Our roll-offs go throughout Rhode Island and up into the Boston area,” he says.
The recycling component is a natural companion to the roll-off business, Foley maintains. “I was amazed at the material I was seeing thrown out—metals, concrete and clean wood,” he says of roll-off containers he observed in his many years in the construction business. “I knew I could make some money from it, especially in these large commercial and industrial construction projects.”
A Mix of Products
In both the roll-off containers Foley places and the other mixed loads Pondview accepts, recoverable materials are present.
The trick, however, is in conducting adequate yet affordable separating processes so only a minimal amount of material goes to the landfill while the rest consists of a variety of marketable materials.
Foley and Pondview Recycling manager Anthony Davidson admit that establishing those processes has involved no shortage of trial and error experiments. “In the early stages of setting up our C&D operations, Anthony and I would sit down at night and work out plans.
We also toured 20 or 30 different operations and would borrow an idea from here and another one from there. We’re still changing things,” he notes.
“We found out that operating indoors doesn’t work,” Foley says of an initial attempt to conduct sorting operations in a 70,000 square foot building that Pondview owns.
“I think we’re still improving operationally,” he adds. “The whole thing’s a learning process. We’ve done some things we wish we would have done differently, but we’ve also made improvements almost every day and have stayed within regulations.”
Current operations involve several pieces of equipment and a mixture of end products sold to a variety of end markets, including:
Magnets pull out the metal—including fasteners—so that “very little metal gets by,” according to Foley.
Some material still heads to the landfill, including vinyl siding and other plastics.
Growth Plans
Currently, Pondview Recycling takes in 150 tons per day of mixed C&D debris, including its own roll-off containers and loads coming in from other companies and other parts of the region. That volume could be much greater but for one thing: a revised permit that would allow the company to take in more material.
“We’ve applied for a 500 tons per day permit,” says Foley, who says he has been led to believe that everything is on track for approval soon for that permitted increase.
There is a demand for many of the materials produced by Pondview, so Foley is certain the increased volume will generate revenues for Pondview at both ends of its operations—for the additional tipping fees or roll-off charges that will be received as well as with the additional saleable recycled-content products that will be created.
“Because we operate our own concrete and asphalt crushers, we give a good discount on [clean loads of] concrete coming in, and encourage concrete,” says Foley. “Demand is very good for road base and loose driveway and roadway material in this region, and it goes at five or six dollars per ton.”
The company is also optimistic its efforts to make and market more colored wood chips into the landscaping market will both increase the profitability of wood end markets and provide a diversified market beyond the co-generation boiler fuel market.
“We’ve had a very good response to the colored wood chips,” says Foley. “We knew the business was there and we started making them in the late summer after we got a coloring machine that we’re happy with,” he adds, referring to a model from manufacturer T.H. Glennon Co., Salisbury, Mass., that Foley calls “extremely affordable.”
“We project selling a much larger amount next year. We’ll start grinding in February and March to build up for April and May sales,” says Davidson, who predicts they will have no trouble marketing the 1,000 cubic yards per day of the material produced for the landscaping season.
With the approval of a larger volume permit, Pondview Recycling has the potential to become an even larger portion of Foley’s overall Pondview operations. Currently, the company has 75 employees, with 25 to 30 of those working exclusively or partly for the recycling operations. Foley has three sons who work for him, but not on the recycling side of the business.
Foley is optimistic about the company’s future and for the ability of Pondview Recycling to continue to operate well both in tandem with Pondview’s other businesses and as a viable entity on its own.
He notes Pondview Recycling has landed a major contract at the site of the new football stadium being built for the New England Patriots in Foxboro, Mass. “We’re excited about the 2001 construction season,” Foley remarks.
Another booming construction season would provide one of many reasons for optimism for Pondview’s future, with another factor being the tipping fee situation for C&D materials in parts of New England.
“In Massachusetts, tipping fees are out of sight at $75 to $110 per ton, and our rates right now are $45 to $48 per ton for a better quality load and $65 to $75 for a lower quality load,” says Foley. Those favorable price comparisons offer contractors a valid reason to choose recycling over disposal options.
Even with more permitted volume, Foley says the company will continue to seek the cleanest loads and “will try to price out or reject” some loads in order to keep the recycling operations efficient and the percentage recycled high.
Foley says he does not want Pondview to take any of its end markets for granted, and will continue to seek potential new markets for the stream of materials heading onto its property. “We wish we could do more research and development ourselves to find new end markets.”
As it is, however, Pondview has made enough matches between contractors and low tipping fees and between incoming materials and end markets to make recycling work. “We’re excited about the future,” says Foley. “We’ve got a great group of people here who work hard and have helped build a solid company.”
(The author is editor of C&D Recycler.)
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