Roofs to Roads

By John Adelman, President, CMRA

As the Construction Materials Recycling Association prepares to hold its 5th Shingle Recycling Forum in Dallas, October 27-28, I thought I would take this opportunity to discuss how excited we are that in the past 10 years, the recycling of shingles has become an accepted practice in many states around this country.

At our company, CPRC Group located in southern Maine, we have been receiving and processing both pre-consumer and post consumer shingles for more than 17 years. As you can imagine, in the early days, most people thought this to be a crazy endeavor and did not understand how anything good could come from using waste materials in a road base product. After processing well over half a million tons of shingles and finding re-usable products for the materials, it does not surprise us that more and more companies are getting into the business of re-using this tremendously valuable material.

As the prices for all virgin materials continue to climb, the benefits of using this product in both road base and in hot mix asphalt have become even more pronounced both financially as well as performance wise. There is also the larger benefit of not filling valuable landfill space with a material that is difficult to work and won’t breakdown over a reasonable time.

As the marketplace acceptance of these reusable materials has grown so has the technology and wear attributes of the machinery used to process it. The manufacturers have all begun to understand that their respective machines have to be able to process shingle material and as such they have made excellent design upgrades to limit down time and improve efficiency. Today, it is possible to process 80 to100 tons per hour, something we would have dreamed about when we first started handling this material.

As processors and end users get better at using this material, there is no doubt in my mind that shingles should never find their way to a landfill. Like all new things there will be various timeframes for acceptance, but in the end, the facts will rule out and the fact is, this material is very valuable and can be re-used very easily if it is handled properly.

So, if you have any interest in learning more about how you can capitalize on re-using this material, please join us in Dallas to hear from the experts and learn more about what contractors and processors are doing with shingles around the country. Thanks and hope to see you there.

Besides serving as president of the CMRA, John Adelman is president and CEO of CPRC Group, Scarborough, Maine.

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