CMRA MEETING: Over and Above

Taylor Recycling Facility, Montgomery, N.Y., has the same variety of mixed materials coming in its doors as many other C&D recyclers. Where it distinguishes itself, says the company’s Tom Kacandes, is in its attention to the purity of the products being shipped.

Kacandes addressed attendees of the C&D World conference in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., in late January. C&D World is sponsored by the Construction Matierals Recycling Association (CMRA), Lisle, Ill.

When the company creates a product, it “refines a resource into a specific material that meets or exceeds company expectations,” says Kacandes.

Such a mentality, he continued, separates true recyclers from those with a disposal mentality. Garbage or disposal companies want to “get rid of it,” said the New York recycler. “A lot of garbage companies don’t understand [the recycling] mentality.”

Taylor Recycling has worked with manufacturing firms such as U.S. Gypsum that have insisted on a clean product that would not cause production hassles. Kacandes says the company “worked backwards” to first understand U.S. Gypsum’s needs, and then to put a system in place to turn scrap drywall into a product that would fill that need.

The end result has been an exclusive contract to supply the nearby U.S. Gypsum plant with a secondary product that costs 40 percent less than the primary gypsum shipped in from Nova Scotia. It took Taylor Recycling 72 weeks of inquiry, testing and negotiation before the contract was signed.

The only way the arrangement was reached though, says Kacandes, was through demonstrating quality. “In general, our industry needs to be more serious about product quality,” he remarked.

Kacandes stated that the industry needs to overcome early shared mistakes that led to low product quality, often due to inexperience, the use of non-customized equipment, and a lack of understanding of customer quality needs.