Saint-Gobain installs recycling technology at Kentucky gypsum plant

Building materials manufacturer Saint-Gobain, with North American headquarters in Malvern, Pennsylvania, has announced it installed recycling technology at its gypsum wallboard plant in Silver Grove, Kentucky, through its building products subsidiary CertainTeed, which it says will allow the plant to recycle 15,000 tons of paper per year that otherwise would have been sent to a landfill.

The project was announced months after Saint-Gobain rolled out its new global Grow and Impact strategy, which includes reducing waste and increasing the circularity of raw materials at its manufacturing sites. CertainTeed invested $850,000 into the recycling equipment.

Gypsum wallboard is made from a gypsum slurry that is poured and dries between two sheets of paper, and some scrap material consisting of gypsum and paper is normally created every time a production line is started or shut down or when production equipment is changed to manufacture different sizes of wallboard.

CertainTeed captures and recycles most of the gypsum in this scrap material at all its gypsum plants, including Silver Grove, but the scrap paper in this process could not be recycled through traditional means because it was coated in gypsum. The new equipment in Silver Grove grinds the scrap gypsum and paper to finer particles, allowing the plant to capture and internally recycle both the gypsum particles and paper particles, which are then sorted and reintroduced to the production process at the plant.

“This project allows us to reduce our waste and reduce our production costs in Silver Grove while also empowering us to increase the efficiency of our use of natural resources,” says Jay Bachmann, vice president and general manager of CertainTeed gypsum. “We will continue to look for ways to minimize our environmental footprint while maximizing our company’s positive impact for our customers and the communities where we do business.”

The CertainTeed facility in Silver Grove is the largest gypsum wallboard plant in North America and one of the largest in the world. The recycling project at the facility follows several investments in environmental sustainability this year, including renewable energy and sustainable manufacturing and construction initiatives.