recycling a building
Over the weekend, I visited ERRCO (Environmental Resource Return Corp) in Epping, New Hampshire with the Design for Sustainability class. ERRCO essentially takes on construction demolition waste, and attempts to recycle different material streams to divert from landfill. In Massachusetts, regulations now prohibit landfill dumping of construction waste, so many contractors now have no choice but to either pursue recycling/diversion of waste, or paying a high price to have landfills transport the waste to other states.
At ERRCO, they currently sort out the incoming waste stream mainly into wood, metals, concrete, and roof shingles. Wood is chipped into three different quality products: a landfill cover, wood chips for mdf particle board, and fill for biogas. Below are the photos I took as we toured the site.
for biogas:
incoming waste stream:
far pile is for landfill cover, near pile is for mdf:
from here, the sorted incoming material is placed onto stacked conveyor belts, with the larger particles on top, and the smaller falling through to the bottom:
As the stream enters the shed, metals are pulled out by giant magnets. Today, they are processing asphalt roof shingles, so these are all nails that have been sorted out:
the 500 hp compactor/hammer/shredder:
sorting out the plastic contaminant from the asphalt stream:
the control/monitor panel:
at this point, more contaminant material is removed by hand, as the stream moves towards the water sorting area:
Wood floats, so as the materials is passed through the water tank, further separation occurs:
the debris from the water sorting:
the output:
the hammer that does all the smashing:
