National Gypsum Co. entered an agreement with Gypsum Recycling International to buy wallboard waste reclaimed from new construction sites in Massachusetts and New Hampshire. The program will begin this fall. National Gypsum will use the scrap wallboard at its Portsmouth, N.H., plant.
Gypsum Recycling International, headquartered in Denmark, will collect the waste wallboard and crush it. GRI has had a similar system operating successfully in conjunction with wallboard manufacturers in Scandinavia for the past three years.
"By reprocessing the material, National Gypsum will divert waste wallboard, which would otherwise have been sent to landfills, into a productive and environmentally friendly use," said Jerry Carroll, senior vice president, National Gypsum. "The company will divert up to 30,000 tons of waste gypsum to its Portsmouth plant alone. We will begin the project in Massachusetts and New Hampshire and plan to expand it throughout the northeast as circumstances allow."
After the pilot program in the northeast is successfully established, National Gypsum will work with GRI to evaluate similar opportunities in other areas in the U.S.
National Gypsum has a network of 31 plants in North America, in addition to its own paper mills and gypsum mines and quarries.
Gypsum Recycling International is a privately owned company and the world leader in gypsum recycling systems. The company was established in 2001. It is operational in the three Scandinavian countries and in Holland, and is being launched in the UK and Ireland.
Following that announcement, GRI announced it also has signed a multiyear contract with USG Corp. Under this contract USG will purchase reprocessed gypsum and recycle the material into new wallboard.
Under terms of the agreement, GRI will collect gypsum wallboard scrap from commercial construction sites and prepare the material for the wallboard production process at three of USG's manufacturing plants in the Northeast. The program will begin this year.
"Using recycled gypsum in our manufacturing process is consistent with USG's long-standing commitment to encourage environmental awareness in all of our practices," said David Wonnell, director, environmental and manufacturing services at USG Corporation. "We will be using materials that otherwise would have been directed to landfills, and our customers will benefit from lower waste disposal costs."
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