
Crushcrete, a Bethlehem, Pennsylvania company that recycles concrete and asphalt roofing shingles, recently opened a facility in Marshalls Creek, Pennsylvania, to accept shingles, a report from the Pocono Record says. Yard space is being leased from Siberini Excavating, East Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania, at 1080 Sand Hill Drive.
“We provide a cost-effective alternative to dispose and recycle shingles,” Lisa Snyder, Crushcrete’s business development and education coordinator, told the Pocono Record.
Customers, which include contractors and do-it-yourselfers, are charged a tipping fee of $60 per ton, according to the report. Shingles must be “clean”—or free of wood, glass and other deleterious materials.
“We accept only asphalt shingles, nails and the paper that comes along with the shingle,” Snyder said in the report. The company’s newest yard only takes shingles now, but Snyder told the Pocono Record that it could be expanded in the future to accept concrete for recycling.
Crushcrete, which is affiliated with Bethlehem’s Casilio Concrete, was started in 1998 to recycle waste from Casilio’s concrete plant, the report says. The concrete is crushed into various sizes and made into aggregates used for things such as new batches of concrete.
Snyder told the Pocono Record that Crushcrete was the first company to be approved as a tear-off asphalt shingle roof recycler by the state Department of Environmental Protection, in 2009. The firm’s general manager is Tony Medei. His mother, Maria, runs Casilio Concrete, the report says.
“It’s a classic family business,” Snyder said in the report. Crushcrete, the concrete company and a decorative concrete-furniture firm, employs more than 100 people.
According to the report, recycled roof shingles often become parts of new highway pavements.
“It’s an intense process to recycle and clean them,” Snyder told the Pocono Record. “They’re then ground through certain machinery and an end product is produced and sent to asphalt plants.”
In Marshalls Creek, Crushcrete takes delivery of old shingles by first weighing loads on a drive-on scale, the report says. The yard is staffed by two employees and is open every day except Sunday.
While the load is still on the scale, the workers check to see the shingles are clean. If they appear to be acceptable, the load is driven off the scale, dumped and inspected again.
“They will take a machine and turn them over to see what’s on the inside of the shingle load,” Snyder said in the report. “We do reject a large amount of shingles.”
An extra fee, beyond the $60 per ton tipping charge, is assessed to shingles that are not clean, according to a report from the Pocono Record. Those wishing to leave lightly “dirty” shingles pay an extra $25 per ton. Moderately dirty shingles cost an extra $45 per ton, while heavily dirty examples are assessed another $60 per ton.
“We’re thinking of doing away with that, and accepting only truly clean shingles,” Snyder explained in the article.
To satisfy the conditions of Crushcrete’s DEP license, customers dropping shingles for recycling are required to complete a certification sheet, the report says. In addition to the customer’s name and address, the patron must disclose the actual origin of the shingles.
“We do not take built-up roofing, we do not take rubber roofing and we do not take shingles from prior to 1978,” Snyder said in the report. She presents new customers with a PowerPoint presentation that outlines the types of shingles that are acceptable and what’s prohibited in the company’s yards.
Asbestos makes any load of shingles non-recyclable, according to the Pocono Record. Crushcrete tests for the presence of asbestos in every 200 tons of shingles.
The grinding work takes place after the shingles are trucked to Bethlehem. Before this, magnets are used for pulling nails and other metals from the shingles. Human eyes give the shingles another look, and employees pull out any debris missed by the machines. This work, Snyder told the Pocono Record, is hard and is performed outside in all weather conditions.
Some shingles were brought to the Marshalls Creek yard within days of its opening. They were tendered by a local roofer, the report says. Previously, this man had driven shingles to Bethlehem for recycling.
“We’re open here because we’ve navigated to areas where we saw a need for an alternative to the landfill,” Snyder told the Pocono Record. The company plans to install signage near Route 209 as a way to make Crushcrete’s presence in Siberini Excavating’s yard more visible.
Just beyond the trailer that serves as the local office and weigh station, Snyder looked at a small pile of shingles that had been brought for recycling the day before. She said in the article that it was easy to image a scene from the near future, in which the piles were heaping and trucks were lined up with asphalt shingles taken off homes and buildings from all over the region.
“Our goal,” she said in the article, “is for this yard to become the hot spot in this area and become very, very busy.”
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