Indoor C&D Recycling Facility To Open

ABC Disposal Service Inc. will open up a $7.5 million facility in New Bedford, Mass., in May that is permitted to handle up to 500 tons per day of C&D waste and recyclable material.

“Our plant will help ease the landfill capacity shortage, benefit the environment and bring us closer to meeting state recycling goals,” says Michael A. Camara, a co-owner of the new facility.

According to Camara, the New Bedford plant’s technology will differ from that found at other facilities in the state, with the plant being more highly automated.

The facility is fully enclosed and “has all the amenities of an office building, including heat and air conditioning, a locker room with showers and a cafeteria for employees,” according to an ABC Disposal Service news release.

“We wanted to create a nice atmosphere for the people who work here,” says Camara. “We decided to build a comfortable picking area. I’ve seen people pick outside in the winter and decided this isn’t going to work. We have to have a better environment for people than all that cold and wind.”

Camara says the plant should draw C&D materials from New Bedford, Cape Cod, Fall River, Brockton and other surrounding communities. He expects to produce several saleable secondary commodities. “We’ll have a clean wood product, a ‘dirty’ wood product, cardboard, asphalt, brick and concrete, plus metals,” says Camara.

The 47,000-square-foot facility was designed after Camara visited recycling facilities as far away as Germany, Canada, and five different U.S. states. He also worked closely with John Kelso of Jet-A-Way in Roxbury, Mass., an established C&D recycling firm that is also designing a new plant.

“We not only designed our recycling plants together,” says Kelso, “but we’re also sharing staff as we come online, so we can learn from each other.”

The two plants will feature grinding equipment designed and installed by Continental Biomass Inc., Newton, N.H., as well as a float tank system by Flo-Cait Environmental, Holland, Mich., that will separate wood from concrete, brick and asphalt.

Other companies involved in the project include Northeast Scale Co., Auburn, N.H., which is installing five truck scales, and Green Seal Environmental of Sandwich, Mass., which assisted with permitting and technical support.

Although C&D materials will be the focus of the plant, it will also accept at its scale house other types of waste and recyclables for processing or for shipment to other facilities. “It’s a complete waste facility, accepting municipal solid waste, commercial waste, industrial waste, construction waste, demolition waste; wetter streams like restaurant and residential food waste will go to another facility,” says Camara.