C8D Debris Contd.

material by crushing the old plant’s 40,000 tons of concrete on site for use as pavement sub base for the new structure, and selling the steel re-bar to area recyclers.

The operation was successfid enough for U P S to seek out more recyied concrete for construction of its new 1.9million-squarefoot this is ‘Geoqe Jetson’ facility. After setting up another crushing area for concrete pulled recycling. ” from a nearby highway widening project, UPS recycled another 200,000 tons of concrete by February 1993 and even reused some of GMs leftover equipment, saving $1.2 million in avoided tip fees, transportation costs, and new equipment purchases.

This type of pre-planning and market coordination is the future for C&D at planned construction or renovation projects, and even for unplanned events such as natural disasters, says Gene Davis, president of the consulting and engineering fm International Resources Unlimited (IRU, Eugene, Ore.). “If you can find out where the potential markets are for materials in advance, you can break the debris down to its best market potential,” he says. “Our goal is to change the ‘D’ [in C&D] from ‘demolition’ to ‘dismantling.”’

v

Markets: Seek and ye will find Nationwide, C&D experts say a recycling rate for

the material is H l d t to calculate, viryhgwidelybetween about 10% to 40%, depending on the region. However, results of a 1993 construction site waste audit by the Portland, Ore., Metropolitan Service District (Metro), showed that 34 singlefamily homes surveyed produced a C&D stream that was 84’%94% recyclable. Meanwhile, the estimated recychg rate for the Portland area’s 290,000 annual tons of C&D is only about 30%, Metro says.

Why is there such a discrepancy between potential and actual recycling? According to Davis, it’s simply a lack of networking between generators and processors. In one instance, he says, an Oregon county was reducing the wood waste it was collecting from construction sites and, finding no market for it, was sending it to its landfiil. To help comply with its landfill diversion gods, the county hired a California entrepreneur to chip the lumber so it could be given away as hog fuel at a nearby boiler.

Meanwhile, IRU had discovered a particleboard

170 WASTEAGE A P R I L 1 9 9 4

- Stapleton

manufacturer “down the road” from the landfill that had been seadung desperately for feedstock and was willing to pay $35 per ton for clean wood, Davis says. “You can just guess how happy they both were when we told them how close they were-but I suppose the California guy wasn’t too happy!” he says. “They just didn’t know. We get a bunch of stones like that all the time.”

On the other coast, Chris Stapleton, vice president of C&D recycler Stapleton Resource Recycling, Inc. (Milford, COM.), agrees that if you look around enough, the markets are out there.

“Over the past three years, [C&D has] become more of a hot commodity,” says Stapleton, who processes brick, block, asphalt, concrete, wood, metals, drywail, and other I

C&D material. ”But I‘ve been doing this for seven years, now. I think it’s kind of a commentary on recycling. When recycling kicked in in the %Os, legislators only i kept track of household figures, so [C&D recycling] looks 4

new to them now. But the commercial waste business has 4 always dealt with [C&D recycling] on your basic supply- .j

anddemand formula” 3

With a throughput of about 250,000 tons per year- .$ processed by the ReTech System (Myerstown, Pa.)-and .”j 350,000 square feet of space, Stapleton Resource Recycling 8 is the largest C&D processor in New England if not the whole country, Stapleton says. The site expanded even a

further last July with the addition of a bulky-waste facility that accepts wood, aggregate, scrap metals, corrugated boxes, sheetrock, insulation, plastic wrap, and shingles. Nevertheless, he believes there are enough markets for at least two more facilities, which he is planning for in the future.

-a

Markets have been steady and strong for nearly d types of material, he says, especially for aggregate a d

Corn.) for use as mulch. During the summer

used for landscape mulch, he says.

I

CBD Debris Contd.

Muny of toduy’s construction projects, like this foundation for Portland’s new Oregon Arena, are required not only to recycle C&D wastes, but also use as many recycled moteriols as possible in the new structure.

The boiler fuel market has seen a resurgence of late for wood, he says, as more utilities and other businesses realize its renewability and availability. During the Arctic cold snap that gripped much of the eastern U.S. in January, for example, Stapleton saw at least a 100% increase in ordm for wood chips as most rivers froze solid, locking oil- and coalcarrying barges in their tracks.

“I’m regularly being asked by municipalities where they can send their [C&D] waste, and we’re working to supply that recycling service,” Stapleton says. “I don’t see how you can reach these 40%50% ~&i~divemion] goals without pulling more out of bulky C&D. I think MSW has seen its heyday. This is the next forefkont [of the solid waste stream] that needs to be handled-this is ‘George Jetson’ recycling.”

Getting to 50% ... Aside from television cartoons, perhaps no other

event can bring C&D debris recycling to the attention of municipalities, contractors, and the general public like a natural disaster. In the past five years alone, the country has endured the winds and rain of Hurricanes Hugo, Andrew, and Iniki, survived the jolts and aftershocks of the Loma Prieta and Northridge earthquakes in California; held its ground during the worst flooding seen in a century in the Midwest; quenched major brush and forest fires in the West; and weathered a monstrous blizzard and numerous coastal storms along the Eastern

Seaboard. ‘ All of these disasters

produced not only headaches for the insurance industry, with damages estimated in the tens of billions of dollars, but also enormous amounts of C&D debris, strangling C&D markets. As development continues on fault lines and hurricaneprone shores, each disaster seems to overtake the last one in cost; Hurricane Andrew currently tops the list with an estimated $16.5bilIion price tag (see sidebar). To help ease this economic burden, recycling has taken a prominent role in clean-up efforts.

One of the most prominent disaster-related recycling programs was developed after Hurricane Iniki scoured the Hawaiian island of Kauai in September 1992. Nearly 18 months after the devastation, the island has recovered substantially, with more than half of the C&D, green waste, and metal debris diverted fkom the island’s landfii, according to preliminary reports from the Hawaii Department of Solid and Hazardous Wastes (DSHW, Honolulu).

The achievement of this high diversion figure is testament to the unprecedented amount of source separation that occurred in the weeks following the storm, says John Harder of the DSHW. “To get a [nearly 50961 diversion from the landfii during an emergency situation is amazing,” he says. “This is the f r s t [disaster clean-up] I’ve heard of where they had real intensive separation.”

In previom hurricane cleanup projects, such as 1.989’s ” -

Hurricane Hugo in Charleston, S.C. (see W m Age, April 1992, p. 126), more emphasis was placed on waste .a reduction than on separation, Harder says. “They ground -4 up most of the mixed waste first,” he says. “After you’ve ’*;::: done that, there’s not much you can do with it except burn ‘ i” it or landfill it.”

U.S. Army, the National Guard, and several construction

7‘ i

”,..,

Within three weeks after Iniki hit, county workers, the . +

172 WASTEAGE A P R I L 1 9 9 4

contractors used heavy equipment to clear away the, ’ ’.’ debris and sort it out at five separate dump sites, Harder

C8D Debris Contd.

says. The initial sort created three huge piles at each site: green waste, mixed C&D waste, and metals.

By December 1992, Browning-Ferris Industries (BFI, Houston) and Waste Management, Inc. (now WMX Technologies, Inc., Oak Brook, Ill.) descended on the piles to begin more intense sorting of the waste, especially in the C&D piles, Harder says. Both companies began pulling out wood and asphalt roofing shingles, drywall, tar paper, and concrete for recycling. To date, 10,000- 15,000 cubic yards of metals and 150,000 cubic yards of green waste have been separated, he says.

While total waste figures have yet to be calculated, he says, an initial estimate from Harding Lawson Associates (HLA, Portland, Ore.) reported 1.7 million cubic yards of debris were ripped up or blown over by the sustained loo+- mph winds-equalling about five years worth of debris generated in five hours. Between 60% and 80% of this waste was recovered? according to HLA, the remainder, Harder says, was either burned or buried to control diseasecarrying vectors.

From this total, Harder says about 800,000 cubic y a r d s , or 47% of the total debris stream, can be recycled. The metals, due to their high value, were the frrst to be removed, he says. By October 1993, the last of the 3,700 tons of recovered steel and non-ferrous metal was shipped by barge for processing at Hawaii Metal Recycling Co. (HMR, Kapolei, M u ) , which sold it to several Pacific Rim locations, says Jim Banigan, HMRs general manager. Refrigerant Recycling of Hawaii also collected chlorofluorocarbon refrigerants from the more than 1,500 refigerators, air conditioners, and other appliances brought to HMR, he added.

As for the rest of the debris, one Reworks/ Maxigrind (Milwaukee) and two Diamond Z (Caldwell, Idaho) shredders are still reducing the mountain of green waste at the dump sites for use as compost, Harder says. Uses being planned for the C&D piles include: tires and asphalt shingles blended into asphalt road-building operations; concrete and roofing materials crushed for road-base aggregate; drywall gypsum crushed and used as an amendment for Hawaii’s highly acidic soil; and mixed C&D wastes shredded and used as a fuel supplement for supcanewaste-fueled boilers on Kauai.

... but is 50% enough? While the separation efforts in Kauai are generally

applauded as above and beyond the call during a time of crisis, not everyone has been so impressed. For IRU‘s Davis, the Iniki cleanup could have been more efficient and the recycling numbers far higher had a disaster plan

178 WASTE AGE A P R I L 1 9 9 4

been created and simple separation procedures been followed through.

Davis gives praise to county and federal relief workers for separating some material and clearing it away in a timely manner, but criticizes the storage methods of the material. After the C&D material was separated from the green and metal wastes, it was stored in one large pile at each of the sites rather than immediately being broken down further into subcategories.

“It was really tragic to see the huge piles of wood that were commingled with other C&D,” Davis says. “Every time you commingle all the C&D debris together, you reduce it to its point of lowest value. It doesn’t do much good to separate the materials, and then bring it to a recovery site and commingle it all again. It’s not worth a tinker’s damn at that point.

“I was appalled to see homes still unrepaired in Kauai [in January] because there’s no insurance money available, even though there are huge piles [of C&D] sitting there unusable,” he adds. “They’re finding a lot of wood mixed in that have preservatives that do not meet code. Now, they’re saying ‘how can we burn this stuff?’ They’ve got to understand where the potential markets are before the disasters occur.”

According to Harder, however, much of the C&D was hopelessly contaminated at the point of collection and had to picked up to avoid health problems for the island residents. The piles, which are now dried out, are slowly going down as recognizable pieces are picked out, he says. “While the initial cleanup could have been done more quickly and cheaply, I don’t know if the separation system could be done much better, under the circumstances,” he adds.

The relief crews for Hurricane Andrew, which flattened much of south Florida less than a month before Iniki struck, (see Waste &e, October 1992, p. 24), had a similar public health dutyyonly much more both storms knocked out power and water in their areas ~

for weeks, Andrew generated an estimated 42 million cubic yards of debris-nearly 25 times Iniki’s total-and left far more people homeless and destitute.

While the vast majority of the debris was landfiid or burned during the three-week emergency period immediately after the storm, there was an recycle as much as possible, said Deborah Higer, chief of service development for Metro Dade County, Fla.

Of the 6 million tons of debris recorded by the county, about 500,000 tons were burned ou another 500,000 tons of wood waste and dirt were mulched and reused by P&Z Construction, Inc. (Miami). Another

C&D Debris Contd.

subcontractor, Kimmins Recycling Corp. (Tampa, Fia.) took in 15,000 tons of dirt, stone, wood, and metals, eventually recycling 65% of it.

Higer said eight or nine landfills handled the remaining unrecyclable waste, but Waste Management, Inc.’s (Fort Lauderdale, Fla.), Pompano Beach landfill took in the most, according to Linda Long, the company’s director of public affairs. Waste Management collected an estimated 2.3 million tons from Dade County crews and another 1.576 million tons b m the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

“It just added to the tragedy that so much had to be buried-everyhng was so mangled together,” Long said. “We pulled out what we could, like appliances, but it was just a drop in the bucket.”

Extmrdina y plunsfor ordina y C&D Learning from these disaster stories, a few

municipalities are going a step further by expanding these separation techniques to everyday C&D operations, encouraging recycling, source reduction, and use of recycled building products before they are generated.

One of the first regions to pursue aggressive, orpruzed C&D recycling is the Toronto metropolitan area. With a population exceeding 4 million and tip fees still hovering around the $150-per-ton mark, the Greater Toronto Home Builders Association (GTHBA, North York, Ontario) decided in 1991 to step up recycling projects in the Canadian building industry, says Stephen Dupuis, GTHBA’s executive vice president.

The association took a three-pronged approach, Dupuis says: 1) publication of its Making a Molehill Out of a Mountain handbook and video describing waste reduction programs for its members and setting a reduction goal of 50% by 2000; 2) completion of several pilot demonstration projects, such as the “House Strip” project, which reused demolition material and led to the creation of the “ReUze Building Centre” waste exchange depot; and 3) the continuing “Build Green” program, in conjunction with the ORTECH Corp., which educates consumers and builders about using recycledcontent building products.

“We’re still in the midst of a pretty long recession [in Canada],” Dupuis says. “This has emphasized a greater concern with materials management. All we have to do is ensure that these good habits will continue.”

Though the programs have been in effect for three years, they are still in the pilot stage, Dupuis says. GTHBA plans to expand on the Build Green this year, he says, possibly by setting up a subsidiary labeling organization

180 WASTE AGE A P R I L 1 9 9 4

that would list certain Canadian building material 5: manufacturers as “green” companies depending on their ,%!

’* 3

consumer demand for recycled products. Although the _association has yet to promote the

program, GTHBA has already had about 20 manufacturers and 10 builders sign up unofficially,. Dupuis says. “The manufacturers will obviously benefit first by having their name on the list,” he says. “ne all the others are going to wan kind of thmg expand to the rest to the States.”

Oregon again

as IRU and Palennini & Associates (Portland). Like Toronto, Portland‘s appetite for C&D

from $17.90 per ton in 1987 remain today. In addition,

able to provide scrap wood as boiler fuel, turned to the untapped C&D industry for

was planning on building a materials recove

demand waste lumbe study, Metro noted processing facilities jumped in from three to of the 45 C&D recycling facilities in the

With these comb

studies. “We stopped plans for a C&D didn’twanttobein there,” he says.

C&D Debris Contd.

Instead, Metro began a series of waste audits “designed to fill in the gaps” in knowledge of the area’s C&D recycling potential, Goddard says. In a five-month period in 1993, Metro documented 15 different waste audits and case studies of various singlefamily house and apartment complex construction and renovation projects. With the help of IRU, Palermini & Associates, and several other area consultants, Metro discovered great potential to expand C&D recycling markets if separation and processing techniques are improved; in one project, a hand-wrecked, 1,280-square-foot, two-story house was milked for $5,121 worth of salvaged material (about 8%10% of the house’s value), saving more than 42,800 Bhrs of energy.

In the 1992 study on alternative uses for wood in the Metro area, IRU found that panelboard manufacturers were paying $35-$120 per dry ton for clean wood chips, yet the majority of the surveyed processors were sending their chips as hog fuel for just $15-$30 per ton. By improving their chip cleaning techniques and searching for emerging markets, most processors are now landing markets in the panelboard and chipboard industry, Davis says. “Portland’s done a goodjob,” he says. “When [IRUI conducted the survey on wood processors, we found that only 10% knew what they were doing. Today, there’s a real attitude change toward recycling.”

As for marketing concrete, brick, and block “That’s a nebrainer-you should be recycling that stuff, anyway,” Goddard says, citing the modest but steady markets for aggregate in most of the country. “If you mix rubble in with solid waste, you’ll just take a low-value item and pay 1,000%- 4,000% more to process it.”

For the drywall market, markets are far more unstable due to the difficulty in handling the material, and success depends on proximity to processors, Goddard says. Since 1992, Portland has sent a limited amount to a wailboard plant 150 miles away, which Metro describes as “near the limit of economical t r a n s p o f i ” Other possible

182 WASTEAGE APRIL 1 9 9 4

uses for the drywall gypsum include two small pilot programs to turn it into fertilizer pellets and animal bedding, he adds.

Trailbibzing to new markets While gathering information on C&D generation is

crucial to establishing a recycling program, “getting it [translated] into the‘ specification packages and encouraging project planners to demand waste management programs [from their contractors] is the red test,” says Debbie Palennini of Palermini & Associates.

Using the vast reserve of data Palermini accrued from her waste audits, recycling programs, and C&D recycling surveys with Metro-including a buy-recycled promotion campaign similar to GTHBA’s labeling project-she set her sights on developing guidelines for C&D recycling that could be included in a construction vroiect’s bid specs.

‘L.

‘W

i .: 4 1

1 . 0

The largest application of Palermini‘s guidelines, to ; date, has been the solid waste management plan approved ‘

for Portland’s Oregon Arena Project, a massive, $262- million renovation enterprise surrounding Veteran’s Memorial Coliseum, current home of the city’s Trail .: Blazers professional basketball team. The 750,000-square- .;.. foot project-which wil l include a new 20,340-seat arena, 1, a 25,000-square-foot entertainment complex, light-rail access, and extra parking along the Willamette River4 I the first of its size to have such a waste managemeq program, according to the Oregon Arena Corp. (OAG.

-.-

C&D Debris Contd.

Portland). Under Palermini's plan, the general contractor,

Drake/Turner Joint Venture, is required to recycle as much concrete, asphalt, masonry, landdearing debris, metals, wood, drywall, and cardboard as possible h m the site's waste stream. The specifcations even go so far as to provide a chart listing all recycling or disposal companies applicable to each of these materials, and ask the contractor to circle the companies to be used.

In addition, the specs extend these requirements to Drakeflurner's subcontractors, as well, and encourage them to reuse materials to the highest practicable extent. The subcontractors must also source-separate all waste materials into individual recycling bins and roll-off containers, provided by Drake/Tmer.

As of February 1994, thanks to a clause written into the specs requiring bi-weekly waste tracking reports, OAC determined that, one year after the project began, the

Oregon Arena Project has diverted 30,706 tons of woc metal, salvage (large timbers and metals for reus1 contaminated dirt, landclearing debris, rubble, z cardboard from landfiig. Another 312,000 tons of a has been hauled away for reuse as fill, while just 1 tons of waste has been landfiied. Waste Management Oregon (a subsidiary of WMX) was chosen Drake/Tumer to collect the wood, drywall, metal, a cardboard, while minorityavned A.G.G. Enterpri! (Portland) picks up the non-recyclable solid waste and t paper and cardboard collected from the small off; recycling program on the site.

So h, OAC has saved $70,000 by recycling the me and wood fractions, Palermini says. At this poi construction has consisted of the demolition of an old c wash building, the on@ CoIiseum's exhibit hall, a a parking structure, and the building of several n access roads, she says.

184 WASTEAGE A P R I L 1 9 9 4

C&D Debris Contd.

i l

As the crews begin on the foundation of the main arena, Palennini says the next recycling step will be the potential use of recycled materials, such as aggregate and rebar, in the new structure. Current construction estimates will place the Trail Blazers in their new and partially recycled home by October 1995, she adds.

Metro, too, is considering a similar C&D recycling requirement in some of its upcoming bids, Goddard says. The Port of Portland is planning on razing 400,000 s q u a r e feet of warehouse space on Pier 1 by the W h e t t e River, and Metro asked IRU and Portland-based Sonderstrom Architects to come up with a salvage plan.

Although the specs are still preliminary-there is still no decision as to how many contractors will be used- the prototype under discussion for the pier 1 project is already set up to include in the bid documents assurances that all materials are dismantled (not demolished), sorted into 12 main categories, prepared for reconditioning,

and stored separately before being shipped for recycling. "These projects are all economically justified,"

Goddard says. "We're just trying to educate the builders and also develop a curriculum to educate spec-writers. Then we can get a master, standardized format in place. It's happening in other places, too, in little pockets around the country."

"The real impact is on the larger projects," says P a l e d , who is also working on spec packages in Texas and Washington. "The little singlefimily homes will take care of themselves, but only if the markets are there. In Las Vegas, they have 15-, 2 5 , 30,000 new homes just built and no place to take clean construction waste."

"It's out there," Davis adds, regarding new C&D markets. "Sometimes it takes loss of feedstock-either that or legislation-to get people to realize it. But it's out there." I

APRIL 1 9 9 4 WASTEAGE 185