The home front: WasteCap Wisconsin residential recycling program finds market for recycled gypsum

Construction & Demolition Recycling, May-June, 2005 by Jenna Kunde, Katie Udell

How did one of Wisconsin's largest home builders get named Environmentalist of the Year, keep 1,250 cubic yards (approx 624,000 pounds) of gypsum drywall out of landfills after less than a year, build soils and have the partnership of state regulatory authorities in this new recycling program?

Starting in February 2004, Bielinski Homes, one of Wisconsin's largest home builders, partnered with Prairie Tree Landscape and WasteCap Wisconsin to start an aggressive residential recycling program. Building approximately 640 homes per year, Bielinski generates a substantial amount of construction waste--much of which is now being recycled.

WHO IS INVOLVED?

The Bielinski recycling program was set up to reduce, reuse and recycle as much from the waste stream as possible. According to the National Association of Home Builders, drywall, wood and cardboard make up approximately 70 percent of a home's construction waste. The Bielinski recycling program reuses wood, masonry and drywall and recycles cardboard and metal. Starting in 2005, the program will begin recycling vinyl siding, which will continue to raise the amount of material that will be recycled on a Bielinski site. To date, this program has resulted in a 61 percent recycling rate by weight, and the elimination of more than 8,000 cubic yards of construction waste from Wisconsin landfills in just 10 months.

Prairie Tree Landscape handles the logistics of the recycling program. This includes the grinding, collecting and processing of recyclable material and waste at each home site. Prairie Tree Landscape also provides reports to WasteCap that details the quantities of each recyclable material collected. WasteCap compiles and synthesizes these reports to create monthly reports that track the progress of the program.

WasteCap, Prairie Tree Landscape and Bielinski all work together to educate trade partners (subcontractors) about the recycling program and make sure the program runs smoothly. WasteCap also helps to enforce, evaluate, monitor and improve the program by conducting monthly site visits to the development sites and to speak with trade partners. This process has led to the inclusion of vinyl siding in the recycling program and to modifying the ways trash is collected. Currently tests are being done for using a small dumpster at each home site instead of the trash pens. WasteCap also provides technical and research assistance, market information and helps share the story of the recycling program and its results.

THE PROCESS

The Bielinski recycling program was set up on an individual home basis. Each home site has a trash pen, which is essentially a box defined by green snow fencing and stakes. In each pen are cans with heavy-duty bags that are to contain trash. Trade partners fill these cans with their construction debris that is not recyclable. Items that are too large for the cans are to be placed inside the pen next to the cans.

Materials to be reused or recycled are put into separate piles next to the trash pen. This includes wood, drywall, metal and masonry. This system works well, as typically only one of these items is generated at any time and thus only one pile at a time is outside the trash pen. Cardboard is flattened and kept inside the garage.

Prairie Tree Landscape crews go to each home site weekly. They collect trash from the pens, metal from beside the pens and cardboard from the garages and take these items to central dumpsters. A Packer 750 grinds the drywall, wood and masonry. The brick and block typically represents a very small amount, about 0.25 cubic yards per home and is incorporated into the sub-base for the driveways. On average, 11 cubic yards of wood per home is ground and taken to a central location where it is then used as landscape mulch around shrubs, trees, other plantings and for paths in natural areas in the developments.

THE REUSE OF DRYWALL

Drywall is second only to wood as the largest material in the residential construction scrap stream, and Bielinski has been able to reuse this material on its construction sites as part of its recycling program.

Gypsum drywall is a source of calcium and sulfur similar to agricultural gypsum. Most turf grasses and ornamental plants need these nutrients, and gypsum drywall helps break up the heavy clay soils common throughout Southeast Wisconsin where Bielinski Homes are installed. The drywall does not change the pH in the soil like lime because it's pH neutral.

Prairie Tree Landscape stops at a house to grind the drywall once after the drywall process has been completed. It takes approximately 1.5 hours to grind 8 cubic yards of gypsum, the quantity of gypsum drywall scrap generated by an average house in a Bielinski home. A large sleeve covers the conveyor belt and chute to minimize dust. Grinding drywall can be a very dusty operation, and the sleeve does a nice job of minimizing dust.

The gypsum is ground into the size of roughly a dime or less in diameter. The paper, when it is ground, is ripped from the gypsum, resulting in segments of roughly 2 inches in spread. Grinding the wallboard is much quicker and creates less wear and tear on the grinder than grinding the wood for wood chips. The ground drywall drops into the back of a truck, and the truck takes the ground drywall to a centralized area in the development.