CBI: like a hurricane: a CBI 4800 grinder keeps up with a South Carolina county's massive and sudden hurricane debris volume.

A CBI 4800 grinder keeps up ,with a South Carolina county's massive and sudden hurricane debris volume.

Nearly 50,000 cubic yards--that's how much storm debris Hurricane Charley blew onto the Horry County Solid Waste Authority (SWA) landfill, Conway S.C., in August and September of 2004. Then for three straight days, after the winds and the rains stopped, county employees put their CB14800 grinder to the test processing the huge pile of debris into usable products. Working straight through from 6 a.m. to 9 p.m., employee meals and breaks were scheduled so the nearly four-year-old grinder would not have to stop for a minute in the effort to clean up the facility in a timely manner.

"We never shut the grinder down," says Gerald Johnstone, director of operations and planning for the SWA landfill. "We used an excavator and a loader to feed it, with a dozer to push the pile toward it. In those three days we were able to catch up with everything that was brought in to us from around the county and get back to our normal operating mode, even before the rest of the area had a chance to completely re cover from the storm."

That kind of efficiency is what Johnstone has come to expect from his CBI 4800. Horry County uses the horizontal grinder for the recycling of asphalt shingles and two different wood streams, even though the 700acre site has permitted capacity for nearly two more decades. The tipping fee is less than $27 per ton, which could be considered too low to make recycling economically feasible. But Johnstone believes that "anyone at a landfill who doesn't grind up and recycle the wood and shingles is throwing away money."

Horry County SWA uses the CBI to grind up C&D wood and pallets into a chip product used near the MSW face. "We have a lot of food waste in our MSW, which makes it more fluid." Johnstone says. "We put the processed chips down at the face, and it works great to dry out the temp roads so the trucks can get in there." The green waste is processed into mulch or compost products that are either sold or used around the landfill site.

Highly abrasive asphalt shingles are another product diverted on their way into the landfill and run through the CBI unit. The post-consumer shingles are stockpiled until they reach about 5,000 tons, then processed and used for temp roads and main roads at the landfill. The SWA also crushes about 15,000 tons of asphalt and concrete that comes to the landfill, and this material is also used to build and maintain roads. About 90 percent of the shingles that enter the site get used for this purpose.

All these products made from diverted materials would instead have to be purchased from the outside, which is one way the 4800 earns its keep at the facility. For example, Johnstone says that before the purchase of the grinder, the SWA would spend $50,000 a year for someone to come in to grind the shingles. Now it spends around $5,000 to do the job itself-even with the extra investment in special teeth needed to handle the shingles.

Money is also saved on air space. "All we in the landfill business have to sell is space," says Johnstone. "So it makes no sense to use it up frivolously. We figure we are saving about 150,000 to 200,000 cubic yards of air space every year because of our recycling efforts. Owning the CBI makes a lot of sense when you consider the amount of space you save."