Forward thinking

At this year’s C&D World Conference & Exhibition, Jan. 31-Feb. 2 in Bonita Springs, Florida, it was hard not to notice the palpable excitement in the air for the future—whatever that might look like—of the construction and demolition (C&D) recycling industry.

With artificial intelligence and automation making meteoric advancements and single-stream material recovery facilities (MRFs) reaping the benefits of transformed operations, the time feels ripe for a season of rapid technological changes in the C&D recycling space.

In his keynote C&D World session, Bill Adams, chief economist for Comerica Bank, highlighted bright spots in the 2024 economic forecast, including continually falling inflation, wage growth leading to increased spending power on behalf of the American consumer and likely interest rate cuts in the second quarter of the year. Adams advised attendees to expect to see 2024 growth in nonresidential construction, including factories, infrastructure and warehouses, as well as plentiful opportunities to repurpose underutilized office space across the country.

In a Technology Forum session, suppliers shared innovations in robotic sorting and ballistic separators, how to leverage the power of data and much more. And in View from the Top, an industry executives panel, C&D recycling leaders expressed optimism for increasing innovation, saying there’s still tremendous untapped potential to integrate new technologies in C&D recycling facilities.

Executives Ben Harvey, president of Westborough, Massachusetts-based E.L. Harvey & Sons Inc./Waste Connections; Charles Lomangino, CEO and manager of Fort Myers, Florida-based Southwest Waste; Jason Haus, CEO of Shakopee, Minnesota-based Dem-Con Cos.; and Matt Spencer, CEO of Rosemont, Illinois-based LRS, remained hopeful for game-changing innovations, such as optical sorters that can identify recyclable materials accurately, robots that can effectively pick on C&D lines and automated processes that can reduce labor.

“The future that I see is trying to reduce the labor side,” Haus said. “It’s a mirror image of what’s happened on the single-stream side, it’s just we’re not quite there yet with that technology.”

You’ll find additional C&D World coverage throughout the magazine, including a recap of the Operations Panel session in our Industry News department, a guide to protecting your plant from lithium-ion battery fires in the article "Mitigating risk, maximizing protection" and the latest in plant optimization trends in the article "Optimal conditions."

Correction: In C&DR’s January-February issue, the story “Cleaning up contamination” incorrectly referred to M&G Polymers as M&G Chemicals. It also listed an incorrect figure for the total amount of concrete diverted from landfill and revenue generated from salvaged steel for the project. The correct figures are 7,800 tons of concrete diverted from landfill and $2 million in revenue generated from recovered steel.