C&D World 2025: Best practices to optimize plant operations

What is one piece of equipment veteran construction and demolition (C&D) recyclers wish they would have implemented from the start? The answers, during a C&D World 2025 session on optimizing plant operations, ranged from a presizer to an electric feeding machine to a Fire Rover.

C&D World is the annual conference and exhibition of the Construction & Demolition Recycling Association. As part of the session Optimizing Plant Operations: Best Practices for Efficiency and Success, moderator Rody Taylor, owner of KC Dumpster, Kansas City, spoke with operators from across the U.S. including Rich Lodgek, president of Mercer Group, Trenton, New Jersey; Ron Tazelaar, owner of Taz Recycling, Chicago; and Terrell Garrett, founder and CEO of GreenWay Recycling, Portland, Oregon.

Lodgek, who runs a 1,500-ton-per-day operation with a C&D recycling facility and a transfer station, said a presizer has helped tremendously when it comes to avoiding jams on the line.   

“We were very against it in the beginning, because we just felt like we were going to lose recovery,” Lodgek said. “But when you realize how much time you were spending on the floor—when the material handlers should be feeding the system all day long, and when they're there, chopping to break down material—that’s wasted [time].”

For Tazelaar, whose company processes 400,000 tons annually through four C&D recycling facilities, adding an electric unit on the front end was a game-changer.

“You don’t have to do oil changes, you don’t have to blow out radiators,” he said. “Some of our facilities, we don’ have the power to do that, so it’s a bit of a challenge, and the price is quite a bit different, too, but I think you save a lot more.”

Garrett, whose mom-and-pop family operation that runs a home-built system, agreed.

“The joy of owning the electric feeding machine is just like you said—the maintenance, the breakdowns, the operation cost—it’s an amazement," he said.

Lodgek added that another recent addition he wished he had years ago was a Fire Rover targeted suppression system, which Taz Recycling has also installed on an indoor facility.

“Especially now with the lithium batteries in the industry, we’ve never had more fires than we’ve had in the past year and a half, two years, and it’s been literally a lifesaver,” Lodgek said. “Batteries are definitely an industry problem right now, but that has helped me sleep.”

End markets

For Mercer Group, which operates a concrete recycling facility, a wood recycling facility and a scrap metal sorting and recovery yard, the most challenging end market has been alternative daily cover, or ADC.

“Landfills want it, [then] they don’t want it, [then] they want it,” Lodgek said. “But throughout the years, we’ve always found different purposes for it, and it’s a big recycling category for us.”

In Portland, Garrett said he also struggles with ADC as well as recycling wood.

“We cannot colorize and do beauty bark, because we have real bark in our region,” he said, adding that he would also like to see an increase in demand in the shingle market. “Over the years, I cleaned up most of the shingle piles in Oregon, but we don't have any demand in Oregon, so our shingles are either used beneficially in the landfill to burrito-wrap asbestos areas or for roadways and landings, or we haul them clear to Tacoma, where there is demand.”

Tazelaar agreed, saying he sees far more supply than demand for shingles and that he’s keeping an eye on gypsum as a new end market coming online in his area.

“There’s a new facility that just opened up,” Tazelaar said. “We’ve not started taking any to them yet, but we’re starting to separate at the facility, so we’re looking forward to that. And it’s always good when a new end market comes online.”

On the inbound side, all three operators agreed the most challenging material to deal with is industrial roofing.

When it comes to marketing to increase tonnages into the facility, each operator uses similar tactics. Mercer Group employes street reps that cover different counties as well as internal telemarketers who make calls to contacts, while Taz Recycling targets demolition contractors, who often bring in loads of material that’s high in recoverable wood scrap, aggregates and more. Another strategy Tazelaar uses is storm chasing.

“Where there’s hail damage, you see all the roofers going out and you get a free roof, right?” he said. “Well, that material needs to go somewhere, and so you just canvas that neighborhood. It’s been pretty effective.”

C&D recycling equipment

When it comes to equipment, Mercer Group uses a Sherbrooke OEM system, which was installed in 2004.

Since, the company has installed a Finger-Screen 2.0 primary screen from General Kinematics, Crystal Lake, Illinois, to help eliminate downtime caused by clogs along the line, along with a Pri-Max PR6600 primary reducer from SSI Shredding Systems, Wilsonville, Oregon, to do a 30-inch cut.

“We don’t want to go any smaller than that, because you want to be able to identify and still sort the materials that come across the belts and the lines,” Lodgek said.

Mercer Group also employs a destoner, in-line magnets, a Tana slow speed shredder from Humdinger Equipment, Lubbock, Texas, and, on the floor, two Volvo EC300 material handlers and 150 loaders from Volvo Construction Equipment North America, Shippensburg, Pennsylvania.

At GreenWay, the line starts with a stationary electric loader from Rotobec, Quebec, and continues through a contact shredder and a ballistic separator. The facility also uses several Action Equipment screens of various types as well as two wood grinders from West Salem Machinery, Salem, Oregon.

Most Taz Recycling facilities use Caterpillar excavators to feed the line, and uses General Kinematics finger screens and a destoner as well as two slow speed grinders from Viably, Denver.

“Our facility in Palatine has a Built-Rite electric excavator, pedestal-mounted,” Tazelaar said. “We just put an order in for a Sennebogen electric, track-mounted.”

While none of the three operators use robotics or artificial intelligence (AI) equipment in the facilities, all three expressed interest in potentially incorporating AI in the near future.

“Over the years, we haven’t really been convinced yet to do heavy optical sorting or the robotics because we just felt like it was too limited for the volume that we handled,” Lodgek said. “We just couldn’t spend that much time. But I think it’s come a long way, and from some of the people I talked to in the industry, it seems like it’s getting better and better.”

Garrett agreed that AI and robotic technologies are improving.

“We’re getting close, but we’re going to have to do a better job of prep,” Garrett said. “I think people are asking these machines to do many things to address a mix of products that’s too varied in size or composition. Or when they do their work, you end up doing all this QC that negates the economics of the situation. Yes, it’s coming forward very quickly, but we’re going to have to do the other part in order for them to be able to do their part.”

The numbers game

Each operator approaches the science of metrics a little differently. Tazelaar puts together a site comparison each month between the company’s four C&D processing sites, and looks at a percentage.

“It’s pretty fascinating to see that all those percentages are usually within a couple of points of each other,” Tazelaar said. “So, if something’s running out of line at a specific location … then we’ll drill down on that particular site and look at the line item and say, ‘OK, what’s going on here?’”

He compares the monitoring of those numbers to taking blood pressure.

“Once you have the number, it’s ‘OK, now we have something wrong. Let’s dig in, do some bloodwork and figure out further what’s going on,’” he said.

For Mercer Group, one of the key drivers is average inbound revenue per ton, which is compared to outbound disposal costs.

“If it’s within a dollar or two, you’re pretty happy with that. But if there’s fluctuations, then you’ve got to look back,” Lodgek said. “Are we doing something wrong in our recycling process, or do we have something that’s not working correctly? Is the labor not picking and sorting correctly?”

Even more than recovery rates, Garrett said, volume is the biggest factor contributing to GreenWay’s bottom line. He watches seasonal changes and uses public records requests with local government to compare his facility’s numbers to those of his competitors.

“I compare my facility’s results to the competing facilities to make sure that the changes in my numbers are reasonable and in line with the entire marketplace,” Garrett said. “If our volume is dropping generally in the marketplace, is C&D dropping in the marketplace? What’s going on? It gives me a much better feeling to make sure that we’re not missing something.”

As for what keeps these operators up at night?

For Lodgek, it’s a multitude of factors, all involving the safety of his facility.

“I had a couple scary experiences prior to getting Fire Rover,” he said. “We have cameras that monitor basically everywhere in our facility. Every night, before I go to bed, I look at the camera. I’ve been looking at it, getting the glasses, and I’m looking a little closer—one of the pipes in the roof of the heart of our MRF, it’s an almost a 50,000-square-foot building and we had a massive leak coming right down into the onto the floor. And there were high winds, too, so there was a wire on the ground. So, you know, driving over the to the facility [at] two o'clock in the morning is always really fun.”