May 1, 2006
Tearing up the road | Scarborough-based Commercial Paving and Recycling turns old asphalt and other debris into recycled construction materials
By Jeffrey Bouley
Conventional wisdom says "garbage in, garbage out." But in the early 1990s, Scarborough-based Commercial Paving found itself with some oil-contaminated soil at a paving site and had a more productive view. Looking at how other states handled soil remediation, the nearly 50-year-old company discovered that its cold-mix equipment, which adds an oil-derivative emulsion to stone to make asphalt, was essentially the same as the equipment used to coat contaminated soil with a stabilizing agent for remediation. Using that equipment, the company was able to turn the soil into construction fill, rather than paying to have it hauled away.
Seeing the potential for a new line of business, Commercial Paving, then owned by founder Marshall L. "Jack" Gibson, started exploring how other materials, such as debris from rehabilitation and construction of roads, also could be reused. By 1992, the company was officially in the recycling business.
Today, paving is a mere blip on the radar of what is now called Commercial Paving and Recycling Co., representing only 15% of the business. Meanwhile, CPRC's conversion technology lines of business ˆ including recycling, bark mulch production, contract grinding and aggregate manufacturing ˆ make up the rest. A number of communities and businesses in Maine and beyond rely on CPRC to relieve them of unwanted debris and provide them with recycled materials for new projects. Late last year, the company also won the right to operate Portland's Riverside Recycling Center, one of the few state-licensed construction and demolition (C&D) debris recycling centers in the area.
"At the end of the day, what we do is take these materials that formerly would find their final home at a landfill, and we give another opportunity to go out and find new life," says CEO John Adelman. "We can price ourselves more aggressively than the landfills can, so that we can get our hands on those materials and convert them into a product that we resell, often at a cost less than that of virgin materials."
The idea of recycling C&D isn't new, notes William Turley, executive director of the Eola, Ill.-based Construction Materials Recycling Association, but it's increasingly important as landfills become more clogged. Moreover, it's the kind of venture he says can be very profitable in the right hands. "The ancient Romans rebuilt their roads with the stones from the old ones, so that's really where this industry began," Turley says. "And construction recycling really took off after World War II, when cities in Europe developed grinders to turn their debris into usable materials."
But taking the old and making it into new materials is more than convenient; it's a necessity now, Turley maintains. While the Environmental Protection Agency only tracks consumer municipal and solid waste, which total about 220 million tons a year, Turley estimates C&D debris at about 325 million tons annually. "That's a lot of material that is better recycled than tossed away," Turley says "We call C&D the silent waste stream."
Silent perhaps, but all too visible in landfills or municipal public works yards. And Adelman sees that as a market opportunity.
Sparing the landfills
CPRC's business model depends on having a steady stream of material that it can turn into sellable products. For a while, it did that via a Maine Department of Environmental Protection-licensed solid waste processing facility, a municipal transfer station and a hot mix asphalt plant, all in Scarborough. Those facilities serve municipal clients as well as the construction industry by collecting debris and doling out recycled materials.
Brad Cleaves, president of D&C Construction Co., headquartered in Rockland, Mass., is a fan of using C&D material in his projects, saying it works very well for roadwork and parking projects. For example, his company used 20,000 yards of C&D for an RV dealership lot in Saco this spring, and is completing a project in Old Orchard Beach using another 10,000 yards. Cleaves plans to use up to 20,000 yards of it as base fill for a sewer separation project in South Portland.
The difference in cost for recycled materials versus virgin ones can be significant. CPRC offers 3/4-inch recycled aggregate that can be used as construction fill for $8.75 per ton, Adelman says. By comparison, he says, new 3/4-inch gravel can cost nearly $14 a ton. And CPRC will even offer construction fill material that originally started off as contaminated soil at no charge at all.
Helping increase its supply of raw materials and customer reach, since November CPRC has also been operating the Riverside Recycling Facility for the city of Portland, replacing the previous contracting company, Scarborough-based L.R. Higgins. The city's Department of Public Works still staffs the three-person service office at the front gate, handling initial load inspection, fee collection and payment for access. City workers also handle billing of large customers and provide public relations for customers entering the facility. CPRC takes care of all the material handling and processing that goes on beyond the gate.
The relationship works well for both parties, even beyond the simple management arrangement, which runs for five years with a five-year renewal option. Portland expects to save $500,000 a year working with CPRC, but it will also receive, as part of the materials exchange program CPRC operates with municipal clients, about $90,000 worth of recycled road-building materials each year for free in exchange for the waste materials brought to Riverside. In turn, CPRC gets a new source for materials that it can potentially recycle: roughly 20% of the Riverside facility's 50,000 tons of solid waste is commercial waste material.
CPRC is investing $1 million over the next two years to upgrade the Riverside facility and increase both its capacity and efficiency. The company plans to make the Portland facility a place that not only accepts waste but also sells recycled materials to the residential market, as well as commercial contractors. "We want to make a similar relationship with residential customers, so that they no longer think of Riverside as just 'the dump,'" Adelman says. "We want them to be able to come in with the big stump they pulled out of their yard and be able to buy mulch and other materials to bring back home and finish up their landscaping."
In addition, CPRC recently extended its reach into Auburn with the winter purchase of Morse Brothers Inc., a family-owned company that manufactures bark mulch.
"Our goal is to maintain the bulk mulch business that Morse Brothers built during the past 30 years and expand the operation by utilizing the equipment and transportation facilities on the Auburn site as part of a broader natural resource recovery system," Adelman says.
Located on 213 acres along Lewiston Junction Road, the Auburn facility consists of a 156-acre DEP-licensed facility for processing wood waste, including the manufacture of bark mulch. According to Adelman, the site produces more than 100,000 tons of bark mulch each year. The Morse Brothers facility also is intended to be both a place to deliver debris and to buy recycled materials, but will probably continue to focus on wood and mulch materials specifically.
Avoiding the long haul
In addition to its fixed facilities, CPRC also transports debris away from construction sites, roadwork location and municipal facilities, both as a way to make money and to add to its pile of recyclables. In all, Adelman says the profit margins are healthy (though he declined to name any specific figures). But a huge challenge looms: transportation costs. Adelman figures the company's transportation costs have risen 35% since gasoline prices surged last year.
That's a large part of why CPRC wanted to manage Riverside in Portland, and why it acquired Morse Brothers in Auburn. "We now have three locations, and each one is slightly different in nature in terms of what they handle, but they all provide a platform for bringing materials in, converting them and selling a final product," Adelman says. "That's critical to keeping our costs down, particularly with gas prices where they are."
Trucks that go out of state to deliver recycled products from CPRC often come back with debris from those locations, but the long-term plan is to add even more facilities to cut down travel requirements are much as possible. Adelman says the company is bidding on two potential properties in Maine and two out of state, but declines to give details because the negotiations are ongoing.
Even beyond the gas price issue, having multiple processing and reselling sites and an effective transportation network is important as the business itself grows. "Transportation costs as part of your cost of doing business has increased so dramatically in the past couple years that anytime we can get synergies for that, we are going to look into it," he says. "Whether bark mulch or hot mix or aggregates, if you get too far away from a market, then your costs structure becomes non-competitive."
Adelman notes that the current locations are in large population centers, and future locations almost certainly will be as well. CPRC's recycling and conversion business currently includes more than 70 municipalities that, like Portland, take part in the materials exchange program. Those municipal clients make up about 60% of CPRC's business, with commercial companies in second place at 30% and residential a mere 10%.
One of the company's long-standing clients is the Augusta Bureau of Public Works. Between 1994 and 2004, CPRC hauled 57,000 tons of asphalt waste from the Augusta Public Works yard, which was crushed, screened and blended to make a gravel substitute CPRC calls C&R. In return, CPRC gave Auburn 14,000 tons of C&R road base material for free. "Using this recycled road gravel means I don't have to dig out virgin material from the city's gravel pit," notes John Charest, director of the bureau.
Likewise, Auburn's Bureau of Solid Waste gives CPRC roughly 1,000 tons of old residential roof shingles a year and in return gets 750 tons of C&R and 250 tons of CPRC's Hot De-Icer, a substitute for road salt that is made from reclaimed aggregate and asphalt binders.
CPRC might have even more clients if not for the deliberate pace at which companies and communities adopt new practices, says Phil Dunn, an assistant professor of construction management technology for the College of Engineering at the University of Maine in Orono. Everyone knows what gravel is; not everyone is familiar with C&R. And many developers are skittish about using recycled materials ˆ even when the price is right ˆ because they don't want to be early adopters of a relatively untested product, Dunn says. Only the increased use of such products by companies like D&C Construction and municipalities like Augusta have begun to prove the viability of recycled materials in place of virgin products.
Growing interest in the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design Green Building Rating System has also helped, Dunn notes, since LEED certification of buildings calls for sustainable development not just in terms of a building's energy efficiency, but also in materials selection and demolition material removal and reuse. "Most contractors are receptive to trying new things," Dunn says. "It's just a matter of giving them time to understand the technology and to get some latitude in their project specifications."
If market conditions continue to expand CPRC's potential customer, the major challenges Adelman sees going forward are in keeping costs down and efficiencies up enough to provide a more cost-effective profile than landfilling old debris and buying virgin materials. While the company doesn't see direct competition from another single-source for hauling waste, converting those materials into new products and reselling them, Adelman says he will continue working with both the traditional waste-hauling industries as well as the construction market to ensure a steady flow of raw materials and customers.
"This is in many ways still a very young industry," Adelman says. "People are beginning to understand that the things we offer are valuable, and there is still a tremendous amount of 'What do we do with this?' attitude about waste and debris out there. We are part of the solution to that question."
Seeing the potential for a new line of business, Commercial Paving, then owned by founder Marshall L. "Jack" Gibson, started exploring how other materials, such as debris from rehabilitation and construction of roads, also could be reused. By 1992, the company was officially in the recycling business.
Today, paving is a mere blip on the radar of what is now called Commercial Paving and Recycling Co., representing only 15% of the business. Meanwhile, CPRC's conversion technology lines of business ˆ including recycling, bark mulch production, contract grinding and aggregate manufacturing ˆ make up the rest. A number of communities and businesses in Maine and beyond rely on CPRC to relieve them of unwanted debris and provide them with recycled materials for new projects. Late last year, the company also won the right to operate Portland's Riverside Recycling Center, one of the few state-licensed construction and demolition (C&D) debris recycling centers in the area.
"At the end of the day, what we do is take these materials that formerly would find their final home at a landfill, and we give another opportunity to go out and find new life," says CEO John Adelman. "We can price ourselves more aggressively than the landfills can, so that we can get our hands on those materials and convert them into a product that we resell, often at a cost less than that of virgin materials."
The idea of recycling C&D isn't new, notes William Turley, executive director of the Eola, Ill.-based Construction Materials Recycling Association, but it's increasingly important as landfills become more clogged. Moreover, it's the kind of venture he says can be very profitable in the right hands. "The ancient Romans rebuilt their roads with the stones from the old ones, so that's really where this industry began," Turley says. "And construction recycling really took off after World War II, when cities in Europe developed grinders to turn their debris into usable materials."
But taking the old and making it into new materials is more than convenient; it's a necessity now, Turley maintains. While the Environmental Protection Agency only tracks consumer municipal and solid waste, which total about 220 million tons a year, Turley estimates C&D debris at about 325 million tons annually. "That's a lot of material that is better recycled than tossed away," Turley says "We call C&D the silent waste stream."
Silent perhaps, but all too visible in landfills or municipal public works yards. And Adelman sees that as a market opportunity.
Sparing the landfills
CPRC's business model depends on having a steady stream of material that it can turn into sellable products. For a while, it did that via a Maine Department of Environmental Protection-licensed solid waste processing facility, a municipal transfer station and a hot mix asphalt plant, all in Scarborough. Those facilities serve municipal clients as well as the construction industry by collecting debris and doling out recycled materials.
Brad Cleaves, president of D&C Construction Co., headquartered in Rockland, Mass., is a fan of using C&D material in his projects, saying it works very well for roadwork and parking projects. For example, his company used 20,000 yards of C&D for an RV dealership lot in Saco this spring, and is completing a project in Old Orchard Beach using another 10,000 yards. Cleaves plans to use up to 20,000 yards of it as base fill for a sewer separation project in South Portland.
The difference in cost for recycled materials versus virgin ones can be significant. CPRC offers 3/4-inch recycled aggregate that can be used as construction fill for $8.75 per ton, Adelman says. By comparison, he says, new 3/4-inch gravel can cost nearly $14 a ton. And CPRC will even offer construction fill material that originally started off as contaminated soil at no charge at all.
Helping increase its supply of raw materials and customer reach, since November CPRC has also been operating the Riverside Recycling Facility for the city of Portland, replacing the previous contracting company, Scarborough-based L.R. Higgins. The city's Department of Public Works still staffs the three-person service office at the front gate, handling initial load inspection, fee collection and payment for access. City workers also handle billing of large customers and provide public relations for customers entering the facility. CPRC takes care of all the material handling and processing that goes on beyond the gate.
The relationship works well for both parties, even beyond the simple management arrangement, which runs for five years with a five-year renewal option. Portland expects to save $500,000 a year working with CPRC, but it will also receive, as part of the materials exchange program CPRC operates with municipal clients, about $90,000 worth of recycled road-building materials each year for free in exchange for the waste materials brought to Riverside. In turn, CPRC gets a new source for materials that it can potentially recycle: roughly 20% of the Riverside facility's 50,000 tons of solid waste is commercial waste material.
CPRC is investing $1 million over the next two years to upgrade the Riverside facility and increase both its capacity and efficiency. The company plans to make the Portland facility a place that not only accepts waste but also sells recycled materials to the residential market, as well as commercial contractors. "We want to make a similar relationship with residential customers, so that they no longer think of Riverside as just 'the dump,'" Adelman says. "We want them to be able to come in with the big stump they pulled out of their yard and be able to buy mulch and other materials to bring back home and finish up their landscaping."
In addition, CPRC recently extended its reach into Auburn with the winter purchase of Morse Brothers Inc., a family-owned company that manufactures bark mulch.
"Our goal is to maintain the bulk mulch business that Morse Brothers built during the past 30 years and expand the operation by utilizing the equipment and transportation facilities on the Auburn site as part of a broader natural resource recovery system," Adelman says.
Located on 213 acres along Lewiston Junction Road, the Auburn facility consists of a 156-acre DEP-licensed facility for processing wood waste, including the manufacture of bark mulch. According to Adelman, the site produces more than 100,000 tons of bark mulch each year. The Morse Brothers facility also is intended to be both a place to deliver debris and to buy recycled materials, but will probably continue to focus on wood and mulch materials specifically.
Avoiding the long haul
In addition to its fixed facilities, CPRC also transports debris away from construction sites, roadwork location and municipal facilities, both as a way to make money and to add to its pile of recyclables. In all, Adelman says the profit margins are healthy (though he declined to name any specific figures). But a huge challenge looms: transportation costs. Adelman figures the company's transportation costs have risen 35% since gasoline prices surged last year.
That's a large part of why CPRC wanted to manage Riverside in Portland, and why it acquired Morse Brothers in Auburn. "We now have three locations, and each one is slightly different in nature in terms of what they handle, but they all provide a platform for bringing materials in, converting them and selling a final product," Adelman says. "That's critical to keeping our costs down, particularly with gas prices where they are."
Trucks that go out of state to deliver recycled products from CPRC often come back with debris from those locations, but the long-term plan is to add even more facilities to cut down travel requirements are much as possible. Adelman says the company is bidding on two potential properties in Maine and two out of state, but declines to give details because the negotiations are ongoing.
Even beyond the gas price issue, having multiple processing and reselling sites and an effective transportation network is important as the business itself grows. "Transportation costs as part of your cost of doing business has increased so dramatically in the past couple years that anytime we can get synergies for that, we are going to look into it," he says. "Whether bark mulch or hot mix or aggregates, if you get too far away from a market, then your costs structure becomes non-competitive."
Adelman notes that the current locations are in large population centers, and future locations almost certainly will be as well. CPRC's recycling and conversion business currently includes more than 70 municipalities that, like Portland, take part in the materials exchange program. Those municipal clients make up about 60% of CPRC's business, with commercial companies in second place at 30% and residential a mere 10%.
One of the company's long-standing clients is the Augusta Bureau of Public Works. Between 1994 and 2004, CPRC hauled 57,000 tons of asphalt waste from the Augusta Public Works yard, which was crushed, screened and blended to make a gravel substitute CPRC calls C&R. In return, CPRC gave Auburn 14,000 tons of C&R road base material for free. "Using this recycled road gravel means I don't have to dig out virgin material from the city's gravel pit," notes John Charest, director of the bureau.
Likewise, Auburn's Bureau of Solid Waste gives CPRC roughly 1,000 tons of old residential roof shingles a year and in return gets 750 tons of C&R and 250 tons of CPRC's Hot De-Icer, a substitute for road salt that is made from reclaimed aggregate and asphalt binders.
CPRC might have even more clients if not for the deliberate pace at which companies and communities adopt new practices, says Phil Dunn, an assistant professor of construction management technology for the College of Engineering at the University of Maine in Orono. Everyone knows what gravel is; not everyone is familiar with C&R. And many developers are skittish about using recycled materials ˆ even when the price is right ˆ because they don't want to be early adopters of a relatively untested product, Dunn says. Only the increased use of such products by companies like D&C Construction and municipalities like Augusta have begun to prove the viability of recycled materials in place of virgin products.
Growing interest in the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design Green Building Rating System has also helped, Dunn notes, since LEED certification of buildings calls for sustainable development not just in terms of a building's energy efficiency, but also in materials selection and demolition material removal and reuse. "Most contractors are receptive to trying new things," Dunn says. "It's just a matter of giving them time to understand the technology and to get some latitude in their project specifications."
If market conditions continue to expand CPRC's potential customer, the major challenges Adelman sees going forward are in keeping costs down and efficiencies up enough to provide a more cost-effective profile than landfilling old debris and buying virgin materials. While the company doesn't see direct competition from another single-source for hauling waste, converting those materials into new products and reselling them, Adelman says he will continue working with both the traditional waste-hauling industries as well as the construction market to ensure a steady flow of raw materials and customers.
"This is in many ways still a very young industry," Adelman says. "People are beginning to understand that the things we offer are valuable, and there is still a tremendous amount of 'What do we do with this?' attitude about waste and debris out there. We are part of the solution to that question."
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