C&D News

Grinnell Recycling & Container Service, headquartered in Sparta, N.J., has received approval to build and operate a materials recycling facility at its existing Class B recycling facility. The approval means the company will be allowed to handle a wide range of commingled recyclables generated at construction and demolition sites. Previous to the approval, the company was only able to handle source-separated materials.

Materials that the company expects to handle include concrete, asphalt, metal, brick, block, sheetrock, old corrugated containers and paper. Grinnell will be permitted to handle 400 tons of C&D debris per day.

Construction of the 25,000-square-foot building, scale house and office buildings is expected to be complete by early this summer, with operations to begin by August.

The allocation of nearly £65,000 in funding from U.K.-based WRAP (Waste & Resources Action Programme) to a Rotherham plasterboard recycling operation will enable the facility to process 85,000 metric tons more of scrap plasterboard in the next five years.

The award by WRAP’s plasterboard capital funding competition to Roy Hatfield Ltd. has enabled the recycling operation to make a series of improvements and additions to its facilities and introduce two new pieces of reprocessing equipment. The funding also hasenabled the company to double its storage capacity through the construction of a new covered bay that can hold nearly 600 metric tons of plasterboard.

Installation of a primary sizer ensures the scrap plasterboard entering the separation process is of a consistent size. A new cyclone and density separator improves the quality of the recycled gypsum powder and produces cleaner paper, according to WRAP.

With an estimated 100 million tons of concrete generated in demolition projects being recycled each year in the United States—with a relatively small percentage of it containing lead-based paint (LBP)—questions have been raised regarding its suitability for reuse.

A study conducted under sponsorship of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has found there is no environmental or health risk to workers crushing and recycling concrete containing LBP, as long as they follow certain lead compliance work protocols.

The study, developed by Principal Investigator Stephen D. Cosper of the Construction Engineering Research Laboratory, deals with the demolition of family housing at Fort Ord, Calif., which is typical of the older Army building stock, much of which is being demolished. The report is entitled "LBP Concerns in Producing Recycled Concrete Aggregate from Former Fort Ord Family Housing."

"The regulatory environment on this issue of concrete reuse is unclear, so a report of this type is extremely important to the demolition industry," explains Michael R. Taylor, CAE (certified association executive), executive director of the National Demolition Association.

The report attempts to correlate the concentration of lead on the painted buildings to the concentration of lead in aggregate produced from those buildings’ demolition. The final concentration is the key metric in determining suitable end use. In the case of Fort Ord housing, the final lead concentration was found to be quite low, according to a press release from the National Demolition Association.

The Construction Materials Recycling Association and the National Demolition Association funded the report. The Construction Engineering Research Laboratory is part of the U.S. Army Research and Development Center, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

A free copy of the report is available through the National Demolition Association at www.demolitionassociation.com.