Recently in Recycled Materials Category

RE Stores are growing organically.  Reused building materials are available as used building materials, salvage, architectural salvage and fill a need in between garage sale stores, Lowes, antique store and definitely eclectic salvaged treasures!

RE Store is an outlet REsources  in Bellingham, WA that pulls reusable materials out of projects and they then set up a store to handle all the materials.  They are now the largest retail store in downtown Bellingham.  The store staff are paid employees, and they use volunteers from community service programs, and interested volunteers as well. 

These people are like minded and concerned about their communities.   Newish items run about half of new prices.  Other items are based on gut feel.  Donations are accepted and sometimes are bought at about 25% of their value. 

Goals for used building materials are to keep things out of the landfill, help low income families, and assist artists.  Lots of used building material treasure hunting goes on here!

Kinds of used materials vary from:  doors, dimensional lumber, cabnitry, hardware, windows, flashing, plumbing, hardware, toilets and sinks, lighting fixtures, and even science room cabinets.  Salvaged materials look for cool and valuable.  Appliances are sometimes usable such as refrigerator and ovens.  

Public donations. Deconstruction crews take houses apart by hand.  Salvage crews reclaim used remodeling parts.  Pickup crews pick up used building materials and appliances from homeowners.   These salvage operations are all safer and more time efficient than mining the landfill.

Employees at Re Store are over educated, environmentally minded and have a very positive energy!  Their dedication shows in the service and sorting skills applied to the used and salvaged materials.

They can presort, restore and make it recyclable.  And can recycle other materials such as asphalt roofing materials to recycle 60-80% of a building. It can take 3 weeks (300-400 hours) vs. 2 days to deconstruct a house...save the homeowner landfill costs and give the homeowner a tax deduction.  Reuse of the materials can help cover costs.  Breakeven is the mission, the goal.  Mission driven vs. profit driven.  But they are sucess driven for the community!

A deconstruction industry is forming, and new tools are being designed for effective work productivity.  Deconstruction provides a lot of jobs, and teams typcally work with crews of 6 people on their deconstruction and recycling projects.

One new tool is a pneumatic nail remover  -- and is seen as the most exciting new tool because it saves time, and can save additional amounts and kinds of wood.

Reality inspires community!  People support and gather around solutions to real needs -- the Re Store is about connections!   

Savings ALWAYS start with a plan.  Remember the A-Team slogan "I love it when a plan comes together!" ?  You can make that your mantra when you decide to work with used building materials...and you'll come out the winner.

Step ONE
Develop a practical plan for your remodeling project.  If you don't have experience, get help from an experienced friend or professional -- learn from them.  You'll save money and time on this project...and all your projects to come.  Humility is a great investment opportunity! :-)

Step TWO
Make a detailed list of all the tools and buiilding supplies you will need to complete the project.  All the way from the number of nails to the roofing replacements down to the sealant in the basement!  This list will be "practical" if you make distinction between NEEDS and WANTS.   And if you're looking for salvaged materials -- note some options that will work, with attributes that are absolutely necessary -- like size, quality factors. 

Step THREE
Develop  a real world budget. Compare "New Material" costs to "Used" and be sure to fudge Upward on used materials for mistakes and waste that is inevitable. Never use sale prices when budgeting -- you can't count on that windfall.  Sale savings can help offset the deficit that is sure to be part of your budgeting process if you are new at the game!

Step FOUR
Research, research, research. Finding and buying used building materials, recycled materials, architectural salvage or old stuff is an artform.  Learn the terms to use in your search engine searches:  recycled materials, building salvage, restoration, reuse, architectural salvage etc.  And also add your location (city, county, state) to the search to find items close to you.  And don't forget to search for the nationally known resources for used building materials:  Habitat for Humanity, Re-Store, Salvation Army, Re-use stores, CraigsList, Goodwill and local construction companies.

Step FIVE
Don't forget the added costs for used materials -- you might have to drive farther and more often to find the materials -- factor in your gas and your time.  And the time of any assistants you hire.

Step SIX
Do the analysis in the harsh light of economic daylight!  Ask tough questions like...
How much actual savings can you identify between new and used materials?
Is there a local source that's convenient and low cost?
Is it important to you to reduce waste going to your local landfill?
How creative are you with mixing and matching small supplies of any given material?
Which items have a "do not budge" criteria that will be hard to meet with recycled finds?
Do you have extra time to invest in the added creativity and craft required to use recycled materials?
Do you want some great stories to tell?  How much are you willing to invest in the fun side of the equation? 

Architects have known for ages that old buildings are great resources for new building projects.  Even in ancient times, old stones and old timbers were reused after disasters and when materials were needed locally that harkened back to better days.

Sounds like today, doesn't it?

Architectural salvage is an established commercial sector. 

Architectural salvate contacts in your local area are probably quiet ... but you can bet the architects and contractors and even interior designers know where these treasure houses are located.

Your local historic preservation society probably also knows of salvagers who specialize in antique building parts, and sometimes these preservation societies even operate their own nonprofit salvage warehouses to promote and assist with old-house restorations.

Most architectural salvage warehouses are in urban areas -- for obvious supply and demand reasons.  Web sites are a great new addition to this market for unique properties -- instant communications and cheap online cataloging make it possible to shop from your armchair.

You can even make special requests on some websites such as ShoppersPage at About (Shoppers Page).  Recycler's Exchange (Recycler's Exchange) is an information exchange for buying, selling or trading all sorts of materials and equipment, including remodeling supplies.

AntiqueNet ( AntiqueNet.)is a commerce site that sells and auctions antiques and collectibles.

And don't forget eBay, CraigsList and other  consumer sites that connect people for mutual benefit.

Finding local salvage or used building materials is one thing...finding enough materials for a large project like a room addition or even a new building or new house is a challenge on a whole different scale.

That's when you need to check out resouces such as:

Habitat ReStores:  Shops that sell used building supplies and other used building materials.  Proceeds from ReStores help build Habitat houses in the community -- an additional sustainable benefit!

Building Materials Reuse Association (BMRA) is a nonprofit educational resource for those interested or involved in deconstruction and reuse, recycyling and recovery of building materials.  They have a directory of reuse stores at:  Directory of BuildingReuse.org

Reclaimed Wood Council gives you all the basics about reclaimed wood and can connect you with reclaimed wood specialty companies.  Reclaimed wood in increasingly being used for furniture manufacturing as well as construction projects to help qualify for USGBC LEED projects.

Online commerce sites such as Craigslist and Freecycle help connect you with people with stuff.  Concerns are that you really need to know what you're doing and have to watch for stolen property.  Safety for your own well-being if you carry cash to off the beaten path locations can also be a concern.  Don't go alone!

Dumpster diving, looking around landfills and junk yards are also sources for unique materials -- but usually not in sufficient quantity, not to mention that you really need to know your stuff to separate quality from junk.

Used building materials are a time honored conservation strategy.  My father was an old world carpenter who maintained a shop that was half workspace and half storage of used building materials from previous jobs that could be used in future jobs.  It was part of his work habits to conserve good used materials.  Maybe that was because we didn't have curbside pickup of trash -- we lived in the country and had to haul our own trash to the city dump and pay to dump it.  So the trash was minimized ... and the annual trip was seen as a necessary evil, not a solution.  That meant we learned every trick to use old building materials like wood and brick and even old nuts and bolts.

The solution to conserving materials was to carefully use every bit of material bought for a job, and to save anything left over -- both new materials and used materials.  Recycling used materials is smart. Using "used" saves money.  AND it saves our increasingly precious natural resources.

But what are the tricks to maximizing the value of used building materials?

Pre-planning the job.

During the design phase of your job, when you're sketching possible solutions...revisit your stash of used building materials.  Sort through your used hardware.  And used plywood,.  And used boards.  And used or remnant laminate.  Let your imagination roam among your current resources -- your treasure chest of used building materials and make them an integral part of your design.

Designing with used building materials

Used materials have not only pragmatic value...but aesthetic value.  The patina of old wood is rich and textured with use.  Old paint can be decorative and unique.  Used hardware has character.

Sourcing used building materials

Architectural supply houses deconstruct old buildings and make these used, aesthetic and practical materials available for new projects.  Habitat for Humanity also has a growing chain of reuse materials that are salvaged materials from remodeling jobs and old buildings.  These used and remnant materials are sorted and stored to protect their value and integrity.  And the discounts are amazingly affordable.

The Habitat ReStores of used building materials are found on the Internet by searching for your local region (city, county, or state) and "Habitat Restore". 

Local building tear downs

Many people have old buildings on their property that they want torn down (with a treasure trove of used building matrials!).  Reasons vary.  Often they don't have the tools or the truck available to handle the job of reclaiming or storing the used materials themselves, but would welcome your help in tearing down the building and hauling away the valuable used building material salvage...in exchange for your proud acquisition of the used building materials.  

Sometimes people advertise that they are looking for a deal to exchange labor for the used building materials and salvage.  Sometimes it the "friendship network" that connects you can connect you with used materials.  Sometimes you can find reclamation opportunities at a local resource center such as the local hardware store, lumber yard or restaurant bulletin board.

Salvaging new construction materials

When you see a construction site -- whether it is a new home or a remodeling job, you can stop and ask the owner and construction supervisor if you could have their left over and salvaged, used building materials.  You could work out a deal for a good price...and save them tipping fees at the landfill.  You can also purchase excess materials they purchased because they need a safety factor on large scale jobs -- this excess inventory can often be bought at a savings.

Consider all your costs

Before you scavenge for new or used building materials a long way from home, consider your own costs:  the fuel, the wear and tear on your vehicle and the storage costs.   It pays to save...but it pays more to carefully time your used material purchases to meet your needs. Most people don't have a working shop in which they can store used and salvaged materials for some future possibility.  Storage takes money to heat and cool, to pay taxes on...and to clean. 

But reclaiming used building materials has many benefits ... for you, for your community and for our natural resources.

By Julie Gevrenov, environmental engineer with EPA

Recycling markets for post-consumer asphalt roofing shingles (tear-offs) are starting to gain ground. The blossoming green building movement, emphasis on environmental stewardship, increasing oil prices, aggregate shortages, efforts to decrease greenhouse gas emissions, state recycling programs and regulations, local recycling ordinances, increasing tipping (disposal) fees and difficulty choosing sites for new landfills are some drivers pushing recycling of construction and demolition materials into the limelight.

In addition, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA's) Resource Conservation Challenge is drawing attention to reuse and recycling of construction and demolition materials.

According to the Construction Materials Recycling Association (CMRA), an estimated 11 million tons of asphalt roofing shingles are generated annually in the U.S., and some estimates are higher. Compared with other construction and demolition materials such as metal, concrete and asphalt pavement, only a small percentage of asphalt shingle tear-offs are currently recovered, leaving significant opportunity to use recycled asphalt shingles.

The primary use for recycled asphalt shingles in the U.S. is as a road building material, particularly for use in hot-mix asphalt. Other uses of recycled asphalt shingles include cold-mix asphalt, cold patch, road base, dust control, mulch, temporary roads and fuel.

The benefits derived from using recycled asphalt shingles stem from the recovery of asphalt cement and mineral aggregate components of shingles, each of which represent about 20 to 40 percent of a shingle's weight. With the price of oil at an all-time high and aggregate shortages being experienced in some areas of the U.S., there are obvious reasons to investigate opportunities to recycle shingles.

Resources

Check out www.shinglerecycling.org, a comprehensive clearinghouse of information about the subject.

The Web site includes overviews of shingle recycling in each state (including state regulations, environmental agency contacts and all known recyclers), economics of recycling, markets for recycled shingles, pertinent environmental regulations, worker health and safety issues, a library of literature on shingle recycling and current research.

Environmental issues

Environmental Issues Associated with Asphalt Shingle Recycling discusses two main environmental concerns: asbestos, which occasionally is found in the fiberglass or felt mat of shingles, and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), which occur naturally in asphalt products.

Best practices

Recycling Tear-Off Asphalt Shingles: Best Practices Guide provides a starting point for shingle recyclers to plan a new operation or improve an existing one. It focuses on business planning, recycling operations, marketing strategies and compliance recommendations and identifies three major best practices, each with a number of supporting points:

1. Recyclers should implement quality-assurance and -control systems to carefully control the quality of their incoming supplies of shingle tear-off materials.
2. Recyclers' end product, recycled asphalt shingles, should meet or exceed material specifications of their end markets.
3. A recycler's business plan should include a marketing plan based on multiple outlets for recycled asphalt shingles.

Economic Issues

Shingles are heavy, making transportation a limiting factor in any recycling project. The recycling tipping fee must be cost-competitive for a roofing contractor to choose recycling instead of disposal. Likewise, a recycled asphalt shingle product must be priced competitively because end-users are more likely to choose a nontraditional or recycled product if it will save them money. And finally, preference for using recycled asphalt shingles varies among hot-mix asphalt plant operators.

Materials specifications also are critical for market development. State department of transportation (DOT) specifications often are relied on by county and local public works engineers and used on private jobs and DOT projects. However, only a handful of state DOTs (Georgia, Missouri and South Carolina) currently have specifications for using recycled asphalt shingles in hot-mix asphalt.

Other states (Indiana, Massachusetts, Minnesota, North Carolina, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Texas and Virginia) have specifications for the use of manufacturers' shingle scrap in hot-mix asphalt though the volume of available manufacturers' scrap is insignificant compared with the volume of shingle tear-offs generated annually.

How to Recycle Shingles in YOUR State

Recycling presents great environmental stewardship opportunities for the roofing industry. If you are interested in recycling asphalt shingles, research the resources currently available in your state, including state specifications.

You can find this information and key contacts for your state agencies at www.shinglerecycling.org under the State Experience section. Your state regulator will help you learn what can be recycled in your state and how to do it. If you want to start a recycling operation, don't learn by trial and error—you can refer to the best practices guide to glean the cumulative wisdom of the pioneers of asphalt shingle recycling.

Remember, you may be able to reduce your disposal costs by keeping asphalt shingles and other construction and demolition materials out of landfills. And substituting reused or recycled materials in place of virgin materials can result in substantial energy savings and greenhouse gas emissions reductions—and you can make that happen.

Shingle Recycling Business Opportunity

So where's the business opportunity in shingle recycling? On the front end, you obviously can save money by recycling if a recycling tipping fee compares favorably with costs of local landfill tipping fees.

But what about recyclers and end-users, particularly hot-mix asphalt producers? In general, most private companies don't want to discuss their operations, and because local conditions such as tipping fees vary widely, no single example can be representative of all operations.

But a hypothetical, conservative scenario can help reveal some information.

Assuming the asphalt shingles torn off a roof system are 20 percent asphalt, the price of liquid asphalt cement is $300 per ton and about 75 percent of the asphalt in the shingles is "available" to replace virgin asphalt cement in hot-mix asphalt, then the value of the asphalt in the recycled asphalt shingles is about $45 per ton.

If we assume a recycler and hot-mix asphalt producer split the value of the recycled asphalt shingles, $22.50 per ton is paid to the recycler less about $15 per ton for processing and transportation costs, leaving the recycler with about a $7.50 per ton profit on the processing side of the operation alone.

Profitable recycling ventures need revenue from their tipping fees as well as from the sale of recycled materials. If a recycler sets his tipping fee for asphalt shingle tear-offs at 50 to 75 percent of the landfill tipping fee, there is a financial incentive for people to recycle.

EARN:  Sale of Recycled Materials

Presorting Shingles

Recycling Tear-Off Asphalt Shingles: Best Practices Guide (which is available for FREE at www.shinglerecycling.org) explains that presorting can be done quite reasonably by roofing contractors—the goal isn't to remove every last nail from the shingles but to keep wood, plastic and other debris in separate piles.

With the price of petroleum-based products at an all-time high, this conservative, back-of-the-envelope estimate shows that shingle recycling can be quite profitable.

ROI for Roofing, Recycling and Paving

And the economic and environmental benefits are shared across the roofing, recycling and paving industries.

Julie Gevrenov is an environmental engineer with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Region 5 office in Chicago.

READ MORE: Professional Roofing