Proven reputation

When our recycling facility, van der Linde Recycling in Troy, Virginia, received its Recycling Certification Institute (RCI) certification—a third-party evaluation to verify the accuracy and reliability of our recovery/recycling rates—in September 2022, our company was the 23rd facility in the U.S. and the second in Virginia to earn the designation.

The journey to certify the facility began in 2018 as part of an endeavor to increase the company’s credibility. The recycling industry continually is challenged by consumer doubts as to whether material is recycled, and van der Linde wanted to rise above that discourse. We wanted our customers to have confidence that if we say we recycle it, we do. What we didn’t realize at the time was not having a way to verify recycling diversion rates was affecting far more than our facility. It’s not just the recycling facility but also the contractors and builders that benefit when a facility gets certified.

The U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) adopted the first version of LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certification to promote environmentally conscious building projects in August of 1998. In addition to requiring that buildings be designed for sustainability and to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, LEED certification involves using sustainable materials and responsibly managing a project’s waste. Builders get “points” for each category where they can conserve energy or reduce carbon impact. These categories also include materials recycled.

For the construction and demolition (C&D) recycling industry, it was exciting to see builders be rewarded for recycling their material. LEED certification also boosted C&D recycling businesses. Across the U.S., builders brought recovered material to recyclers and received LEED points for what they diverted. The higher the recycling rate, the more points builders received. However, any system, especially a large national program such as LEED, invites the opportunity for misuse. Some contractors and recyclers falsely recorded higher recovery rates to give projects the points needed to receive LEED certification.

Creating a system

In 2008, Bill Turley, then executive director of the Chicago-based Construction & Demolition Recycling Association (CDRA), approached members of the Material & Resources Technical Assistance Group at USGBC to talk about misuse of LEED’s recycling credits. While USGBC recognized this was a big problem, the challenge was how to fix it.

Turley brought the issue to the CDRA board, which authorized developing a program called CORR (Certification of Recycling Rates) to certify recycling rates. The program was developed to ISO-level standards, the most widely used quality management standards in the U.S. Because of those stringent criteria, CORR is the only certification program USGBC recognizes. Circa 2010, the RCI, an independent auditing firm based in Sacramento, California, opened its doors to administer the program.

The certification process takes about 18 to 24 months to complete. Facilities start the process by reporting at least 12 months of facility data, which include the amount of material received and recovered. All data are verified against the facility scale records and with purchasers to confirm the amount of material received. No more than a 5 percent variance can exist between the numbers reported and the scale records/purchaser verification.

If a facility passes the scale audit, a physical audit is scheduled. The facility review includes not only its overall operation but also its Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) inspection records and Occupational Safety and Health Administration records on injury and illness, safety training and safety programs.

After certification, facilities must report recovery numbers monthly and can be subject to audits at any time.

The certification is not easy to achieve, but that is a big part of its value; it is intended to set facilities apart.

Deciding to become a certificated recycling facility was a big decision for van der Linde Recycling. To meet reporting needs, we had to take a good look at our operation. The first task was upgrading our scale system. This was the beginning of 2020, and we were still using the same system we had when we opened in 2008. We took our time to set up the new system to better facilitate our reporting process.

Our team also adjusted our processes for receiving material in our C&D building and for directing and reporting the flow of material, especially for recovered materials such as wood and concrete that were being relocated on our campus. These changes required material to be weighed using the scale outside the processing facility first and then weighed inside the production facility before being transferred to our production yard. It took us almost a year to feel confident that we were ready to begin the certification process, and in January 2021, we started reporting our numbers.

You might think it would be straightforward to report these numbers, but it was a much different process than what we were used to. We always looked at our facility as a whole. We categorized everything as incoming C&D material, no matter whether it came in as a mixed construction load and was dumped in our C&D processing building or if it was a clean load of broken concrete dumped directly in our production yard for crushing. This also is how the Virginia State DEQ annual report is structured.

RCI looks at it differently. For example, our facility has a C&D processing facility, and mixed C&D brought to our processing building is considered one type of material flow. The mixed material is sorted, and recovered items such as concrete, brick and block are transferred to our production yard. When these materials are transferred from the C&D building to the yard, they are recorded as a separate material flow. Our crews also dump “clean” loads (containing only one material type) directly in the yard. This is considered another type of material flow.

RCI looks at the concrete, brick and block as a separate “single” material flow because it did not come into our C&D building for separation. The single material flow also applies to our stumps, brush and logs. Accounting for these separate material flows requires additional measures when the trucks weigh in at the scales to ensure that incoming materials are categorized correctly. At the beginning, this all seemed confusing, but it is done so facilities that take in large quantities of clean concrete, for example, don’t overinflate actual recovery numbers for mixed C&D.

Setting facilities apart

Van der Linde received its certification more than a year ago, and we continue to report our facility’s numbers monthly. I can tell that word is spreading as I’m hearing more of our customers ask about our RCI certification, especially contractors.

Getting certified challenged us to define our processes and know our numbers. We also are aware that everything we don’t recover shows on our monthly report. This is a huge motivator to continue to find ways to increase recovery.

As the number of certified facilities grows, it helps to improve our reputation as an industry. What we like best about being certified is that we have few to no discussions about the legitimacy of our recovery rate; the certification says it all.

The author is CEO of van der Linde Recycling in Troy, Virginia. She can be reached at andrea@vanderlinde recycling.com.