Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category

Congratulations to WM Tualatin Valley Waste Recovery for attaining RCI Certification! Located just outside of Portland, OR, WM TVWR is the second RCI-Certified Facility in the Portland area, and our fourth Certified Facility in the Pacific Northwest.

We look forward to increasing the number of RCI-Certified Facilities in the region who serve the builders, contractors, and other construction professionals seeking recycling/recovery of their construction & demolition waste materials.

Through the use of independent third-party evaluators, RCI’s Certification Process:

• Provides builders, developers and LEED professionals accurate and transparent information and recycling rates, so they can have confidence in calculating the environmental performance of their construction and waste management processes

• Provides a comprehensive set of protocols, guidelines, and tools for professional assessment and certification, the Institute aims to enhance transparency and instill greater confidence in the C&D recycling industry

• Fosters trust among key stakeholders—including project owners, architects, environmental groups, municipalities, and the public—ensuring that reported recycling rates are both reliable and verifiable

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Congratulations to NYC for creating a coalition to reduce GHGs within the construction industry in North America. Expanding the electric construction equipment market provides more benefits than simply reducing GHG emission reductions.  Read on for more details in the NYC Mayor’s Office of Climate & Environmental Justice LinkedIn post below.

Did you know the construction industry accounts for 23% of global green house gas emissions? And in 2020, around 1.9 million tons of CO2 were emitted in the five boroughs from construction, lawn, and industrial machinery.

It’s time to act now to reduce those emissions. Today, in an effort to reduce embodied carbon and accelerate clean construction by animating the market, the City of New York is launching the North American Electric Construction Coalition.

Partnering with the City of Austin, Ville de Montréal, the City of Philadelphia, the City of Los Angeles, The City of San Diego, and Boulder County, Colorado, along with C40 Cities and industry leaders like Consigli Construction Co., Inc., AIANY | Emerging New York Architects, AIA Los Angeles, the Sustainable Purchasing Leadership Council, USGBC Los Angeles Chapter, the Carbon Leadership Forum, we’re pushing to develop the electric construction equipment market and slash harmful air and noise pollution, advancing environmental justice and improving quality of life.

Together, we’re showing cities have the power to lead, innovate, and demand cleaner, quieter, and more sustainable construction practices – and demonstrating the power of cities to spur market growth.

Learn more and join the North American Electric Construction Coalition:

https://lnkd.in/eKeGuP4g.

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Congratulations to Contra Costa Waste Services for certifying their Mount Diablo Resource Recovery Mixed C&D Line.  It was a pleasure working with their team to complete their Certification.  From their Press Release:

Pittsburg, California, May 7, 2024 –  The Contra Costa Waste Services Material Recovery Facility’s Construction and Demolition (C&D) line has received certification from the Recycling Certification Institute (RCI). Contra Costa Waste Services is responsible for accepting, sorting, and diverting C&D debris. The RCI certification was granted following a comprehensive assessment conducted by an external third-party auditor of the facility’s procedures and guidelines. Additionally, it confirms the accuracy of the facility’s recovery and recycling documentation.

The Pittsburg facility is among sixteen C&D processing facilities in California that have achieved RCI certification.

“We are very pleased to have achieved this certification,” said Gary Lazdowski, the Chief Operating Officer of Contra Costa Waste Services. This certification is essential for the contractors responsible for transporting construction and demolition waste to the facility, as well as for environmental conservation efforts. It demonstrates our commitment to maximizing waste recovery. We are excited to be a Trusted + Proven + Essential partner in Contra Costa County.”

Additionally, when a contractor is involved in a project aimed at obtaining LEED greenbuilding certification (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design), they can contribute to earning credits for the certification by responsibly disposing of C&D waste at a facility that is third-party certified.

The C&D Material Recovery Facility (MRF) operation is located at 1300 Loveridge Road in Pittsburg, CA. The MRF is currently owned and operated by Mt. Diablo Resource Recovery. Nothing Wasted Consulting Group performed the evaluation for RCI. The Nothing Wasted evaluation, and additional information on RCI and the Contra Costa Waste Services facility’s performance, can be found on RCI’s website.

About Mt Diablo Resource Recovery:  Mt. Diablo Resource Recovery serves our customers, communities, and environment responsibly by optimizing the use of discarded materials. Today, Mt. Diablo Resource Recovery serves over 250,000 residents and thousands of businesses throughout Contra Costa, Napa, and Solano Counties. Mt. Diablo Resource Recovery combines excellence in customer service with competitive rates, operating recycling and recovery programs designed to increase sustainability and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Mt. Diablo Recycling, in Pittsburg, California, contains the area’s largest state-of-the-art recycling processing center to keep all recyclable items out of the landfill so as much material as possible can be recycled and reused. Our company continues to grow and change to prepare our communities for the future. Consistent with our business values, we invest in programs and technology that maximize diversion and maintain customer convenience and service. Mt. Diablo Recycling is being transformed into the Mt. Diablo Resource Recovery Park (MDRRP). This facility will expand our recovery efforts, increasing the diversion of material from going to the landfill.

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February 20, 2024

Benefits Customers Seeking Certification from U.S. Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Program

The ReSource Waste Services of Lewiston facility that recycles construction and demolition waste (C&D) has been certified by the Recycling Certification Institute (RCI). The RCI certification was based on a rigorous evaluation performed by an independent third party of the facility’s processes and protocols and it also verified the integrity of the facility’s recovery/recycling reports.

The Lewiston facility is the only C&D processing facility in Maine to achieve RCI certification and is one of only two facilities in New England to achieve this certification. The other facility is ReSource Waste Services’ facility in Roxbury, Massachusetts, which achieved RCI certification in 2018.

“We are very pleased to have achieved this certification for the Lewiston facility,” said Jack Canty, the President and Chief Operating Officer of ReSource Waste Services. “This certification is important to many of the contractors who deliver C&D waste to the facility.  If a contractor is working on a project that is seeking LEED green-building certification (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design), the contractor will earn credit toward that certification by delivering the C&D generated by the project to an RCI-certified facility such as ReSource Lewiston.”

LEED construction projects, certified by the U.S. Green Building Council, are required to meet minimum recycling rates for their C&D waste. “We are proud to play a part in our region’s progress toward sustainable construction and development,” Canty said. “Verified sustainability is becoming more and more important to project developers, architects, environmental groups and government agencies.”

Stephen Bantillo, executive director of RCI, said the Institute’s national certification program ensures integrity, transparency, accuracy and reliability in the recovery/recycling reports of participating C&D recycling facilities. Bantillo said that RCI used a rigorous, open, and comprehensive process for developing its protocols. Its primary focus, he said, is on accurate recycling accounting to ensure that the recovery and recycling reports issued by certified facilities are real, verifiable, reproducible, and reasonable.

Environmental Service Management Group, Inc. (ESMG) performed the evaluation for RCI. The ESMG evaluation, and additional information on RCI and the ReSource Lewiston facility’s performance, can be found here.

About ReSource Waste Services of Lewiston

The Lewiston facility, located at 38 Alfred A. Plourde Parkway, is Maine’s largest C&D processing facility and an important component of Maine’s solid waste management system. The facility supports approximately 40 direct full-time jobs, varying by season, and dozens more indirect jobs, and spends approximately $14 million per year on operating expenses, and conducts business with more than 100 vendors and 55 customers. The facility processed approximately 180,000 tons of C&D in 2023. Personnel and equipment are used to recover as much reusable product as possible that can be sold to end markets. Recovered materials can be used to for a wide variety of uses: fuel for electricity generation; medium-density fiberboard (MDF) manufacturing; asphalt paving; new cardboard and drywall; recycled plastic and metal products; and miscellaneous construction materials and soil substitutes.

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LEED v5 for O+M: Existing Buildings (Beta Version) shows promise in addressing some of the hard(er)-to-recover materials in demolition, renovation, and remodeling projects. Materials like carpet, acoustical ceiling tile, furniture, and gypsum wallboard/drywall tend to have higher embodied-carbon ratings, so incentivizing their pathway into closed-loop product take-back manufacturing systems makes sense.

Looking at it from an operational perspective, removing these materials from the C&D materials stream could mean that the typical Mixed/Commingled C&D operation will have less hard-to-recover materials to process, sort, and eventually dispose of in landfills. Spending less time sorting low/no value materials should be a good thing, right?

Does this make up for the reduction in easy-to-recover materials (which have become increasingly source separated) being sent to Mixed/Commingled C&D operations? It depends. But it is still a benefit. Moreover, for us and others who watch these moves, it serves as another signal that the world of materials management and the policies that shape it are always in transition.

We look forward to seeing the full LEED v5 for Materials & Resources. https://www.usgbc.org/resources/leed-v5-operations-and-maintenance-existing-buildings-draft

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C&D World 2024

January 31 – February 2 | Bonita Springs, Florida

C&D World, the CDRA’s Annual Meeting, is held each spring and is the meeting place of the C&D industry. Attendees range from the top management of leading C&D hauling and recycling companies to individuals just starting out in the business and the vendors that serve this market. C&D World features educational sessions focused on must-know trends and topics, networking during breaks and receptions, and information on the latest equipment and services.

Learn More About the Conference and Expo Here!

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“C&D World 2022 Success”

That is the headline in CDRA’s recent newsletter and comments I’ve heard from attendess would echo that message.  The C&D industry looks to be firing on all cylinders and on the advance.  From CDRA:

“What a great show!” was the consensus from attendees at C&D World 2022, the Annual Meeting of the CDRA held March 12-15 in Atlanta. From the well-attended committee meetings on March 12—a Saturday, no less—to a sold-out tour on March 15 hosted by the gracious team at Luck Stone, there were nothing but high points for the 29th C&D World. Attendance returned to pre-pandemic levels, proving that C&D leaders were ready to get together and discuss the issues facing the industry. Presenters covered the gauntlet from an economic forecast to operations at mixed C&D recycling plants. And attendees were able to interact and learn from each other, just as the conference was originally designed to do. We also want to thank the sponsors of the event: Komptech Americas and Plexus Recycling Technologies, CDE, Sparta, General Kinematics, Torxx, Eagle Crusher, VAN DYK Recycling Solutions, Starlight Software, Amp Robotics, Recycling Today Media Group, Untha, Sennebogen, Fire Rover, Machinex, and GreenWaste. Be sure to save the date for C&D World 2023, taking place March 14-15 in Las Vegas alongside ConExpo-Con/Agg.

We would also like to acknowledge the 2022 CDRA Award Recipients for their successes and contributions to the C&D industry.  Of particular note are the RCI Registered and Certified Facilities as recipients of Best Practices in Safety Awards.  Congratulations to all the CDRA award winners!

Presented at C&D World in Atlanta, GA

CDRA Hall of Fame – Dan Costello, Costello Dismantling Company, Inc. 
The Hall of Fame, the industry’s highest honor, celebrates individuals whose careers have best served the industry and the CDRA.

CDRA Member of the Year – Becky Caldwell, Caldwell Environmental Solutions
The CDRA Member of the Year is selected based on extraordinary service to the mission of the organization and the C&D Recycling industry over the previous 12-month period.

C&D Recycler of the Year – Posillico Materials
The C&D Recycler of the Year honors those Recycling Operations in the Construction and Demolition Recycling industry who have made an extraordinary contribution to the industry.

Best Practices in Safety Awards
Gold Award: Champion Waste & Recycling, Cherry Companies, Dem-Con Companies, DTG Recycle, Gray & Son, Lautenbach Recycling, Michael Brothers Hauling & Recycling, Premier Recycle Company, and Southwind RAS

Silver Award: R&B Debris and JR Ramon Demolition

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From Recycling Today – September 15, 2020

While COVID-19’s impact pertaining to amplified residential and diminished commercial volumes has been well documented, its specific effect on the C&D material stream hasn’t garnered as much attention.

At a Sept. 15 WasteExpo Together Online session titled “C&D and COVID-19: Where do we go from here?” a panel of industry experts discussed how ramifications from the pandemic have influenced the industry at large.

Moderated by Clark-Floyd Landfill LLC VP of Engineering & Environmental Affairs Bruce Schmucker, the session also featured Interior Removal Specialist Inc. (IRS) Director of Environmental Affairs Richard Ludt, Dem-Con Companies President Bill Keegan, and AMP Robotics founder and CEO Matanya Horowitz.

“Demo got hit hard when the governor of California announced a Safer at Home order for the state,” Ludt says regarding IRS’s operations, which focus on interior demolition of commercial spaces in the Los Angeles area. “We lost about 90 percent of our work overnight. And then in the coming weeks when it was determined construction was an essential activity, we got a fair amount of it back, but there are still some pretty significant issues going on with construction right now.”

Ludt says that IRS has embraced the Recycling Certification Institute’s certification, which evaluates recycling facilities by not just the percentage of weight diverted from landfill, but also the percentage by commodity diverted from landfill.

Ludt says that one way COVID has impacted operations is by forcing recyclers to reduce the number of manual sorting personnel in their facilities due to the inability to social distance staff. Because this reduced efficiency is hindering facilities’ ability to meet LEED diversion mandates, he says the USGBC is taking a facility’s diversion numbers from the 6 months prior to COVID into account when giving credit to those using these sites.

Keegan says that Dem-Con’s Minnesota-based C&D recovery facility, which specializes in recovering wood, metals, cardboard and aggregate, processes approximately 50,000 to 60,000 tons of C&D per year. The site’s operations were declared an essential service in late March and subsequently were allowed to continue, but the facility looks much different today in how it operates, Keegan says.

“Our response to the pandemic has included creating a COVID action plan, and we’re getting all too familiar with terms like social distancing, but we’ve implemented that,” he says. “We have hygiene and respiratory practices so we have mandatory facemasks, regular cleaning of the facility multiple times a day, we’ve added breakroom and lunchroom areas, we’ve also set up worker pods [that group smaller numbers of workers together rather than have them comingled] and created those so we’re limiting exposure at the facility, we’ve reduced common touchpoints and moved to ticketless transactions and reduced the use of manual time clocks as well, and we’ve reduced the use of refrigerators, microwaves and other shared spaces.”

Keegan says while Dem-Con hasn’t had any workers test positive for COVID yet, it’s a matter of “when” not “if.” Nonetheless, he notes the company has been vigilant in adapting to a new way of doing business.

Keegan points to U.S. housing starts, which were up 160 percent from April to July, as a positive indicator of ramped up activity on the residential side that he forecasts will last into 2021. Conversely, commercial real estate has been down an average of 25 percent with hospitality being down 47 percent, he notes.

At Dem-Con’s facility, Keegan says volumes of C&D tons were up 20 percent year over year into July. He attributes this to ongoing projects continuing operation, while acknowledging that the third and fourth quarters aren’t looking as favorable and he projects volumes to be down overall into 2021.

Although he notes that Dem-Con has strong local end markets for wood, the wood tons recovered at the facility have been down this year, which threatens the company’s bottom line being one of the more high-value commodities. He did say, however, that he couldn’t attribute this directly to COVID.

On ferrous tons recovered, Dem-Con was up in Q1 and Q2 over last year, but Keegan says markets are lower in general. Again, he says it is too early to attribute this directly to COVID.

Going forward, Horowitz says he thinks investment in AI and robotic sorting technology can help mitigate some of the unpredictable staffing issues C&D recyclers are seeing, including safety-related ones unique to COVID.

He also says robotics can help facilities better distance workers without sacrificing throughput.

While these systems were initially designed for single-stream applications, Horowitz notes they are now coming online to help facilities with both staffing and cash flow issues stemming from commodity swings in C&D facilities.

“Initially our focus had been on all these different types of single-stream materials, but now, we’ve found that pretty much the same technology is able to learn and distinguish a large fraction of materials in the construction and demolition world. This can be anything from aggregate to wood and this shows the promise of the technology.”

Posted with permission.  Original article may be found here:  https://www.recyclingtoday.com/article/construction-demolition-recycling-wasteexpo/

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How often is it we hear the phrase “Quality versus Quantity”?  It sometimes elicits a sense of conflict as if to suggest the two are mutually exclusive.  In the current landscape of rules and regulations for C&D recovery, C&D facilities are being pressed to achieve higher quantities of recovered materials while at the same time the markets are demanding higher quality materials.  So yes, in our industry there is an inherent conflict built into that phrase.  But do we forego one in pursuit of the other?  The answer should be “no”.  Both are achievable, but we must look at solutions from a more holistic perspective.

The conflict between the two will always be present if rules and regulations demand higher recovery rates above all else.  A key challenge is that there is only so much a facility can recover from the materials it receives.  As the saying goes, “You can’t make a silk purse from a sow’s ear.”  And the markets are increasingly sensitive to the quality of materials they receive from processors.  Something must give.

Rules and regulations demanding higher recovery rates incentivize facilities participating in a local program to reject low quality loads or code the material as “trash” to maintain a high recovery rate if they want to continue participation in the program.  Another pathway some facilities may take is even less desirable – falsely reporting a higher recovery rate – which comes with a host of negative implications.  And further down the line there are facilities that might accept the loads with low percentages of recoverable materials.  These facilities may do a great job recovering what can be sent to market, but unfortunately their recovery rate may be too low to qualify them for participation in the local program.

The above scenarios may sound hypothetical to some, but they are real.  From a rules and regulations perspective, there is conflict with each of the scenarios.  From a holistic perspective, the system is falling short of the overall potential amount of recovered C&D materials.  Is there a solution that minimizes the conflict and maximizes the recovery of C&D materials?  We think there is, and it comes with numerous benefits beyond reducing the conflict.

Simply put, rules and regulations should focus on performance and not solely on a high recovery rate.  What we mean by a focus on performance is that a facility should recover as much of the recoverable C&D material as possible.  While that may sound simple in concept, we know there are complications and systemic challenges to be overcome.  However, we believe this shift in focus will benefit local programs as well as the C&D industry.

Below is a short list of reasons why a focus on performance has more benefits than a focus on a high recovery rate and can contribute to a higher amount of recovered material overall:

1)    A focus on performance acknowledges market challenges and rewards facilities for doing the best they can with the loads they receive.

2)    Recovering 90% of the 20% that is recoverable is better than landfilling 100% of it.

3)    Facilities are more likely to process all loads they receive.

4)    More facilities can participate in local programs, which contributes to jobs and the economy.

5)    Facilities whose operational models accommodate lower quality loads reduce the pressure on facilities whose equipment is designed to accept higher quality loads.

6)    Effective programs should require third-party certification for facilities to verify performance and compliance, which contributes to a level playing field.

This emerging issue is an area that RCI will be exploring in the coming year and we look forward to hearing your thoughts and suggestions on the topic.

Stephen M Bantillo is Executive Director of the Recycling Certification Institute, and can be reached at info@recyclingcertification.org

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This Latest News post comes to you from the “Turn Back Time” department.

The Recycling Certification Institute (RCI) remains engaged on numerous issues directly and indirectly related to third-party certification.  One of the key issues for 2019 has been the United States Green Building Council’s (USGBC) updates to LEED.  A prior version of LEED (v4) required separation of C&D material streams for credit in the Materials and Resources section.  USGBC updated v4 with a new release in January 2019 in the form of v4.1 beta.  While still requiring separation of C&D materials, v4.1 beta sought to make it easier for builders who took their mixed C&D materials to facilities Certified by RCI.  Unfortunately, the initial version of v4.1 beta added confusion and did not meaningfully address the issues associated with onsite separation of material streams.

RCI continued its communication with USGBC regarding our concerns and last summer the USGBC released an updated version of LEED v4.1 beta.  This latest release is the closest we’ve seen to our original recommendations to USGBC.  While it provides incentive for builders to take mixed C&D loads to RCI-Certified facilities and addresses some of the issues with onsite material separation, it still does not go quite far enough.  We will continue our work with USGBC to bring benefits to projects taking C&D materials to RCI-Certified facilities, which in turn benefits those facilities that are or become RCI-Certified.

We recognize there is still confusion in the “C&D-sphere” with multiple versions of LEED still in play (v2009, v4, and v4.1 beta, for example).  To assist C&D facilities, builders, contractors, project managers/consultants, haulers, local government, etc., we have created a sheet that simplifies the various versions of LEED and provides some basic Q&A as examples.  You may download the sheet at our resources page www.recyclingcertification.org/resources/ .

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