Eye on the Prize

Tipping fees are low, like they are in most of the Buckeye State. So why bother recycling mixed C&D debris?

"We have a three-year-old facility with a very long life,’ says R. David Loewendick Jr., president, S.G. Loewendick & Sons. "So we could turn a blind eye and just shove everything in the landfill, especially at the rates we get in central Ohio. But for every load we divert out of there, it extends the life of the landfill."

Bill Heffner, president of Agg Rok, agrees with the long-term outlook and adds that anyway, "recycling is just the right thing to do." It all depends on how you want to do business he adds. "If you are in business for the long term, then you would want to manage the operator for the future. If you are in it for the quick dollar, then fill it quick." The answer for the Frank Road C&D facility is in the substantial initial capital costs laid out to start and develop the site.

Loewendick is quick to admit that "recycling is a loss leader for us, at least until we develop better end markets." But like the thinking that goes behind a supermarket selling a gallon of milk for less than it pays for it to get buyers to come in and buy other, more profitable items, recycling is paying off in other ways for the entire business venture.

That’s because the Frank Road C&D Facility is one of the only players in the mixed C&D recycling game in central Ohio. With the rise of green building and the U.S. Green Building Council’s (USGBC) Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) programs that promote and even require some C&D recycling on their projects, an outlet that recycles is necessary. That means an opportunity for Central Ohio Contractors Inc., a Loewendick company that provides rolloff containers and expertise on how to best utilize those boxes on a site to facilitate recycling.

Additionally, parent demolition company S.G. Loewendick’s experience doing LEED projects provides the firms a leg up on the competition while providing the general contractor a one-stop shop to meet the recycling requirements of the certification program.

"More and more projects are going to LEED and brownfields," Loewendick says. "LEED is helped by the tax incentives developers and cities can get. The only way recycling is going to work is that LEED demands it, and it would help if they had to use recycled products on the building."

To support that concept, Loewendick recommends that other tax incentives be realigned. "Quit throwing the money at the front end, quit buying the guy a crusher," he says, referring to the relaxation of sales tax for those buying recycling equipment. "Give the tax credits to the company that is buying the recycled products."

Joe Loewendick, vice president, Central Ohio Contractors, says that one project in downtown Columbus is what started the recycling effort. Turner Construction wanted to achieve the recycling points for LEED certification, but they did not have a cost-effective way to get five containers on site and source separate recycleable material. "We put one container at the site and separated at the landfill," he says. As this was the company’s first foray into recycling, a waste characterization was performed from the project site’s debris. The study also looked at whether material from other projects could supplement the flow and make the economies of scale work sufficiently to make recycling economical.

In the end, the Frank Road C&D Facility performed a simple dump and pick operation and made sure the client got an overall 75 percent recycling rate, 89 percent of which came from the demolition part and 57 percent from the dump and pick. The project was able to find recycling outlets for old corrugated containers (OCC), other paper, non-painted wood, metals and concrete. More importantly, "It allowed us to test the recycling waters without spending a lot of money," says Joe Loewendick. "On the learning curve we probably spent over $100,000."

It is money well spent, says Dave Loewendick, because the company needed to learn how to recycle. Otherwise, S.G. Loewendick would not be able to participate in some of the local bids that involve green building because it previously didn’t have a recycling component. "You have to learn to play the game or you are going to be sitting on the sidelines," he says.

Indeed, there is talk around Columbus of a city ordinance requiring the recycling of some debris generated at construction projects. "The proposal for a 25 percent requirement for all demolition material to be recycled has merit," says Heffner, "in that it would encourage awareness and interest in the recycling of demolition material."

Obviously the big revenue source for the Frank Road C&D Facility remains its landfill. Three scales serve the site so that there is no waiting for the many trucks per day that use the facility. The site is permitted for and has an asbestos monocell. According to Joe Loewendick, the facility is permitted to put on top of its two feet of clay liner or equivalent recycled concrete to provide a drainage layer for the leachate collection system.

However, around Columbus supplies of concrete to recycle have tightened in the past few years as natural aggregate prices have risen 20 to 30 percent. Even so, says Agg Rok’s Heffner, the prices have not kept pace with the increased costs to produce, as energy, labor and supplies have greatly increased in cost.

With the new C&D landfill regulations in Ohio, the cost of landfill operation is certain to go up in the future. That is because the regulations require that for any expansion that goes beyond the actual permitted footprint or establishment of a new C&D landfill, the facility must have re-compacted clay liners, groundwater monitoring and leachate testing, similar to what MSW landfills must now have.

The Frank Road Facility has taken a lead in showing how C&D landfill operations will be run in Ohio in the future.

The author is associate publisher of Construction & Demolition Recycling and executive director of the CMRA. He can be contacted at turley@cdrecycling.org.