SWANA honors Dem-Con MRF with Excellence Award

Dem-Con Cos. LLC, Shakopee, Minnesota, has been awarded the gold medal in the 2015 SWANA (Solid Waste Association of North America) Excellence Awards in Recycling Systems for its 20-ton-per-hour residential and commercial single-stream recycling facility.

Since 1965, privately owned Dem-Con was known locally as a source for recycling and construction and demolition debris disposal services.

Late in 2013, Dem-Con and strategic partner Liberty Paper, Becker, Minnesota, responded to the need for additional single-stream recycling processing capacity in the Twin Cities and upper Midwest by opening a new state-of-the-art system in a 70,000-square-foot facility, one of the largest systems of its kind in the state, according to a news release issued by the CP Group, San Diego, the company that supplied the processing system for Dem-Con.   

“As recycling participation has steadily increased in the Twin Cities area, we saw the need for a single-stream facility,” says Dem-Con President Bill Keegan. “Minnesota has a requirement of raising recycling rates to 75 percent, and with more cities going to single stream, the market needed additional processing capacity,” he continues.

CP Group designed, manufactured and installed the processing system in use at Dem-Con. Mixed single-stream and commercial recyclables are processed, separated, sorted and baled by the latest in recycling equipment technology. The plant was designed to recover 95 percent of the targeted recyclable materials, and it is achieving that goal, CP states.

Dem-Con’s facility provides Minnesota with more opportunities to recycle by allowing many haulers to offer single-stream recycling at a competitive rate, minimizing the amount of waste going to landfill, according to the equipment supplier.

Education and outreach to the community is a priority for Dem-Con. The new facility has a educational experience, including a “Green Grades” educational program targeted at 4th-6th graders. With more than 1,700 visitors in its first year, the Dem-Con material recovery facility (MRF) is already on pace to nearly triple the visitor rate in its second year, the news release states.

“We are fortunate to have customers who are forward thinking,” Keegan says. “We are excited to provide these services to the Twin Cities and greater Minnesota and [to] be an active part of increasing recycling rates and diverting more materials from landfills.”

Dem-Con Cos. is a third-generation family-owned-and-operated recycling, processing and disposal facility that has been servicing the Twin Cities and greater Minnesota since 1965. The company operates a residential single-stream MRF, construction and demolition materials recovery facility, shingle processing yard, wood processing facility, metal recycling facility and landfill.

CP Group is a team of manufacturers serving the waste and recycling industry. CP Group—comprising CP Manufacturing, Krause Manufacturing, MSS Inc. and Advanced MRF—provides a variety of sorting solutions worldwide, including MRF manufacturing, retrofits, audits, consulting and engineering services. CP Group designs, installs and services custom turnkey systems for residential recycling, commercial and industrial, municipal solid waste, engineered fuel, construction and demolition and electronic scrap processing.