Shawn Doherty has, in less than 10 years’ time, gone a long way toward removing those barriers for construction and demolition contractors in the Seattle metropolitan area. Doherty started Construction Waste Management Inc. (CWM), Woodinville, Wash., in 1992 as “kind of a fluke,” he says, but has subsequently turned the company into a valuable service provider for contractors, and a valuable materials supplier for recyclers.
NOTION TURNS INTO ACTION
While there was too much good planning to accurately describe the founding of CWM as a “fluke,” Shawn Doherty’s entry into the recycling industry did have some unpredictable elements to it. Doherty’s training and earliest years in the workforce were in auto body repair, but he developed an adverse reaction to toxic chemicals used in that industry. Needing to switch careers, Doherty joined his brother’s drywall contracting company, with one of his duties being to “scrap out the houses and haul gypsum debris to the dump.”
Here is where Doherty’s story begins to sound like that of many other recyclers. Troubled by both the waste of resources and the cost of disposal, Doherty searched for and found drywall recyclers in the state of Washington, and “saw the savings that could be gained by recycling.”
Eventually, Doherty bought a truck and offered the hauling/recycling service to other contractors. The contractors often asked if he knew of a similar service for waste wood, and that is when Doherty began implementing service aspects that make CWM a unique company.
“People are often single-minded,” says Doherty. “They tend to think of themselves as a drywall recycler or a wood recycler. But I saw that builders could use a service where ‘one call does it all.’ It’s efficient, but the only way to do [it profitably] is to have many builders as your clients.”
GAINING STEAM IN A GROWING MARKET
Whenever a new business idea is put into place—especially one that looks like it is serving an undefined niche—there can be justifiable anxiety about future prospects.But in Doherty’s words, regarding CWM’s ability to gain customers: “The niche turned out to be a cavern.”
“The growth has been faster than I expected—but I really didn’t expect anything,” he notes. “There just wasn’t anybody doing this, and I’ve kept adding features so that no one has really been able to catch me in terms of service.” The company has been growing at a $250,000 per-year clip in revenues, according to Doherty.
CWM offers seven different container sizes and three different styles of containers to service job sites. There are now nine full-time CWM employees operating the small fleet of trucks and looking after the containers and job sites scattered throughout the western Washington region.
The company started out in Bellevue, Wash., where it had to compete with heavy traffic in the fast-growing community. “We now have our facility in Woodinville, which offers us more room,” says Doherty. The current location also offers access to several key recycling locations. “It’s right next to Wolford, one of the largest recyclers of wood waste in the area, and they also crush asphalt, concrete, brick and block. And in the same yard, Wolford also rents out space to Resource Recovery, a gypsum recycler.”
As it has grown, CWM has formed working relationships with most of Seattle's largest building contractors, demolition contractors and residential developers. The company has worked on hundreds of commercial projects for most of the area’s largest manufacturers and employers, including Boeing, Microsoft, Matsushita Avionics, Paccar, and the governments of King County and many cities and townships.
The acceptance by contractors of CWM’s method has surprised Doherty, who has also been surprised to learn that companies similar to his are difficult to find in other parts of the country. “I originally assumed there were others doing this, maybe on the East Coast. Slowly I realized that there was no one, at least initially, that does what we do.”
Doherty has collected testimonial quotes reflecting the acceptance of CWM on job sites by contractors:
The concept established by Doherty has filled a key gap between generators seeking disposal options and recyclers seeking materials. Though he acknowledges operating on a “very narrow margin,” the CWM concept has been proven to work in 63 cities in and around the Seattle area, and could work in other large cities with recycling infrastructures as well, Doherty believes.
“I think the model has been set up that can work in other regions and be duplicated, like McDonalds in the restaurant industry,” says Doherty.
While Doherty has no formal franchising mechanism in place, he has fielded calls and helped out others seeking to start up similar services. “Some people have called for advice and have tried to start up similar businesses. I’m willing to provide consulting and check out whether the infrastructure exists in their area to make it feasible—and even to help establish an infrastructure if that’s possible.”
REALITY CHECK
Despite a 10-year track record of growth, Doherty is quick to point out to potential imitators that recycling “is not a get-rich-quick” way to make a living. “We need a large volume because we’re operating on a slim margin,” he says of CWM.
Further acting as a limitation on growth is the labor crunch in Seattle (similar to what can be found in most parts of the country.) “We’re limited by the difficulty of finding skilled people,” says Doherty.“I’ve got to have a group of well-trained people to really grow properly. It takes a month or two to train a driver,” he notes.
And while Seattle’s roster of recyclers has allowed CWM to remain viable for a decade, Doherty warns that the recycling industry’s gains should not be taken for granted. “The recycling infrastructure today is very fragile. It’s made up of little guys trying to make it and not getting a lot of help.”
Doherty says everybody—including the private sector and government—wants to save money and recycle, but there is no program to help small business will the red tape or financing needed to expand existing successful businesses such as CWM.
“Counties, cities, state environmental departments should be holding the hands of these companies and helping them,” he says of recycling start-up companies. “You have to remember that in order for me to service 450 builders in Seattle—or the many companies and their clients that like to take credit for their recycling—that I need that one start-up gypsum recycler or wood recycler to be operating, or it couldn’t happen.”
STRESSING SERVICE
For C&D recycling to work in most cases, generators of materials need to get more tangible results than just feeling good about the environment. In the case of CWM, Doherty emphasizes rapid service for dropping off containers (and promptly emptying them) to make sure his customers benefit from contracting CWM. He also offers advice on managing waste streams.
“If contractors call now, they often ask for consulting advice first as far as what equipment to use to efficiently handle the material and have it ready to be hauled in a way that is labor-efficient. We offer all that free of charge. We really start by thinking about reducing waste at first,” he says of his initial meetings with customers. “Then the implementation stage of doing that well encourages them to recycle as much as possible.
“Talking up front can make everything go more smoothly,” he says. “And if we do all the hauling on a job, we can also do a certain amount of monitoring by seeing where things can be done more efficiently as the job progresses.”
Accepting a comprehensive range of materials has also benefited CWM as it has grown over the past decade. Virtually all types of metal, C&D wood, pallets, drywall, wiring, concrete, asphalt and roofing shingles are among the materials for which he has destinations. He says vinyl siding is a prominent problem material for which he has not found a recycling home.
Doherty or one of his associates also makes sure that service is provided at a level that is difficult to match for the larger waste hauling companies that provide indirect competition. “We’ll almost always respond immediately to a request by bringing the appropriate container to a site, often just as soon as the phone conversation is over.
“I knew I was doing something right when a Waste Management vice president asked me how I kept people from putting trash in a wood only container,” he says. When solid waste companies have tried to establish similar services, they often have had inadequately trained or motivated drivers who will not sort through and clean out a container before taking it to the wood recycler’s property. “Their drivers often do not clean up contaminated loads—my guys know that’s part of what they do.”
ONE LINK IN A LARGER CHAIN?
Construction Waste Management has managed to provide a key link in a recycling loop on a regional level.In a best case scenario for the C&D recycling industry, the company would be a pioneer in a service sector that will soon be established in regional markets throughout North America.
“I think there’s a good demand right now for the recycling of these materials,” says Doherty. “The processors want more and more material. Even in the worst of times, recycling is viable or the best way to handle materials. I’ve never even broke even by dumping.”
Explore the September 2000 Issue
Check out more from this issue and find your next story to read.
Latest from Recycling Today
- Summa Equity acquires majority stake of Bollegraaf
- PTR adds new inside sales account manager
- Cascade Engineering distributes free carts in Flint, Michigan
- CMRA selects venue for nonferrous recycling event
- Biffa adds C&D recycling firm to its portfolio
- Cliffs lines up funding for Canadian acquisition
- BIR joins plastics life cycle effort
- Black mass analysis in the sights of equipment maker
