Jason Haus of Dem-Con Cos. LLC, Shakopee, Minn., says an end market exists for scrap roofing shingles, provided state transportation agencies can send a green light signal to hot-mix asphalt (HMA) plant operators.
At the 2010 C&D World Conference & Exhibition, which was March 28-30 at the Rio Casino Resort in Las Vegas, Haus outlined how his company went about cooperating with the Minnesota Department of Transportation (MnDOT) and HMA plant operators to change his company’s asphalt shingle diversion rate from 3 percent to 75 percent in just four years.
Haus, who noted that there are some 11 million tons of scrap asphalt shingles generated annually, says the knowledge he gained from meeting with HMA plant operators convinced him that the creation of a permissive spec recycled asphalt shingle (RAS) spec from MnDOT would be the key to gaining acceptance for his product.
In the four-year span from initial meetings to the creation of the spec, Dem-Con also researched and invested in processing methods and conducted numerous tests to assure customers that the presence of asbestos was a rarity and occurred at extremely low levels when it was present.
Rich Krock of the Vinyl Institute, Alexandria, Va., provided an overview of building products made from vinyl and the recycling markets being cultivated. According to Krock, about 76 percent of vinyl consumed goes into building products, with pipes and fittings making up the largest market. After pipes and fittings (at 44 percent of the market), vinyl siding at 15 percent, windows and doors at 4 percent, decking and fencing at 4 percent and flooring at 3 percent comprise the other large markets.
Krock remarked that since pipe manufacturers have their own exclusive compound formulas, they often accept only their own products back as scrap. “It’s a little bit of a challenge,” said Krock.
Siding and can baled and shipped and is starting to be used by siding manufacturers as a substrate material, said Krock. He singled out CedarBoards vinyl siding made by CertainTeed Corp., Valley Forge, Pa., which is made from 60 percent recycled material, as an example of this type of siding with a recycled-content substrate. The Vinyl Institute includes a vinyl recycling directory on its Web site.
In the wood fuel markets, Jeff Carter of BFC, Cedar Rapids, Iowa, provided an overview of his company’s gasification waste-to-energy process, which can accept scrap wood as a feedstock.
BFC currently uses byproducts from nearby food processing plants, industrial plants and agricultural industries as its main feedstock sources, but sometimes uses scrap pallets and sawdust as well.