Eye on the price: S.G. Loewendick & Sons and Agg Rok Materials recycle mixed C&D debris as part of a long-term business plan at the Frank Road C&D Facility.

It's not easy to recycle C&D debris in Ohio, a state with low tipping fees and a relatively large number of disposal sites. Indeed, at first glance, it is a money loser, until one goes behind the initial numbers and looks at the reasons for the recycling. Then it makes sense, and can even mean more dollars in the future.

That is the situation with a business partnership in Columbus, Ohio, between Construction Materials Recycling Association (CMRA) member Agg Rok Materials and demolition contractor S.G. Loewendick & Sons for the Frank Road C&D Facility. Agg

FUTURE FOCUSED

Tipping fees are low, like they are in most of the Buckeye State. So why bother recycling mixed C&D debris?

"We have a three-year-old facility with a very long life,' says R. David Loewendick Jr., president, S.G. Loewendick & Sons. "So we could turn a blind eye and just shove everything in the landfill, especially at the rates we get in central Ohio. But for every load we divert out of there, it extends the life of the landfill."

Bill Heffner, president of Agg Rok, agrees with the long-term outlook and adds that anyway, "recycling is just the right thing to do." It all depends on how you want to do business he adds. "If you are in business for the long term, then you would want to manage the operator for the future. If you are in it for the quick dollar, then fill it quick." The answer for the Frank Road C&D facility is in the substantial initial capital costs laid out to start and develop the site.

Loewendick is quick to admit that "recycling is a loss leader for us, at least until we develop better end markets." But like the thinking that goes behind a supermarket selling a gallon of milk for less than it pays for it to get buyers to come in and buy other, more profitable items, recycling is paying off in other ways for the entire business venture.

That's because the Frank Road C&D Facility is one of the only players in the mixed C&D recycling game in central Ohio. With the rise of green building and the U.S. Green Building Council's (USGBC) Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) programs that promote and even require some C&D recycling on their projects, an outlet that recycles is necessary. That means an opportunity for Central Ohio Contractors Inc., a Loewendick company that provides rolloff containers and expertise on how to best utilize those boxes on a site to facilitate recycling.

IN THE LEED

Additionally, parent demolition company S.G. Loewendick's experience doing LEED projects provides the firms a leg up on the competition while providing the general contractor a one-stop shop to meet the recycling requirements of the certification program.

"More and more projects are going to LEED and brownfields," Loewendick says. "LEED is helped by the tax incentives developers and cities can get. The only way recycling is going to work is that LEED demands it, and it would help if they had to use recycled products on the building."

To support that concept, Loewendick recommends that other tax incentives be realigned. "Quit throwing the money at the front end, quit buying the guy a crusher," he says, referring to the relaxation of sales tax for those buying recycling equipment. "Give the tax credits to the company that is buying the recycled products."

Joe Loewendick, vice president, Central Ohio Contractors, says that one project in downtown Columbus is what started the recycling effort. Turner Construction wanted to achieve the recycling points for LEED certification, but they did not have a cost-effective way to get five containers on site and source separate recycleable material. "We put one container at the site and separated at the landfill," he says. As this was the company's first foray into recycling, a waste characterization was performed from the project site's debris. The study also looked at whether material from other projects could supplement the flow and make the economies of scale work sufficiently to make recycling economical.

In the end, the Frank Road C&D Facility performed a simple dump and pick operation and made sure the client got an overall 75 percent recycling rate, 89 percent of which came from the demolition part and 57 percent from the dump and pick. The project was able to find recycling outlets for old corrugated containers (OCC), other paper, non-paintedwood, metals and concrete. More importantly, "It allowed us to test the recycling waters without spending a lot of money," says Joe Loewendick. "On the learning curve we probably spent over $100,000."

It is money well spent, says Dave Loewendick, because the company needed to learn how to recycle. Otherwise, S.G. Loewendick would not be able to participate in some of the local bids that involve green building because it previously didn't have a recycling component. "You have to learn to play the game or you are going to be sitting on the sidelines," he says.

Indeed, there is talk around Columbus of a city ordinance requiring the recycling of some debris generated at construction projects. "The proposal for a 25 percent requirement for all demolition material to be recycled has merit," says Heffner, "in that it would encourage awareness and interest in the recycling of demolition material."

Obviously the big revenue source for the Frank Road C&D Facility remains its landfill. Three scales serve the site so that there is no waiting for the many trucks per day that use the facility. The site is permitted for and has an asbestos monocell. According to Joe Loewendick, the facility is permitted to put on top of its two feet of clay liner or equivalent recycled concrete to provide a drainage layer for the leachate collection system.

However, around Columbus supplies of concrete to recycle have tightened in the past few years as natural aggregate prices have risen 20 to 30 percent. Even so, says Agg Rok's Heffner, the prices have not kept pace with the increased costs to produce, as energy, labor and supplies have greatly increased in cost.

With the new C&D landfill regulations in Ohio, the cost of landfill operation is certain to go up in the future. That is because the regulations require that for any expansion that goes beyond the actual permitted footprint or establishment of a new C&D landfill, the facility must have re-compacted clay liners, groundwater monitoring and leachate testing, similar to what MSW landfills must now have.

The Frank Road Facility has taken a lead in showing how C&D landfill operations will be run in Ohio in the future.

Rok owns the property, and a Loewendick company manages the site.

The facility is a 115-acre C&D landfill. It was recently permitted and is one of the first in the state to follow recently enacted strengtening of the C&D landfill regulations. It uses a combination of a 2-foot clay liner and a geo-synthetic clay liner, the first to do so in the state. It also has groundwater monitoring and leachate testing. The large facility is conveniently located close to downtown Columbus. In addition, it is near two major highways making it easy to reach from several directions.

Mixing Tradition and Vision

For 77 years S.G. Loewendick & Sons has been a demolition company based in central Ohio. At one time it worked in as many as six states, but virtually all of its demolition business is now back within 150 miles of its Columbus, Ohio, headquarters. The main reason for that, according to president R. David Loewendick, is that the company has several other business interests to keep it occupied.

One is management of the Frank Road C&D Facility, one of the largest C&D landfills in Ohio, through its sister company, Central Ohio Contractors. This firm also operates 25 rolloff trucks and 500 containers in the Columbus area. But the flagship remains the demolition company, which is an interesting mix of old school and a vision of the future.

It's old school in the fact that it still owns and operates cranes, according to Loewendick. "They are the cheapest piece of equipment in the fleet, and safer to operate than high reach excavators. You are back further from your work, so you have some room for the debris to fall."

But he knows the main reason most companies don't use cranes in the demolition business is because operators are nearly unavailable any more, and few are interested in learning. "If the crane doesn't have pictures on the levelers telling them what to do, and a computer to tell them what they have a hold of, they can't operate it." Indeed, the company's current crane operator is the son of a crane operator who was on the Loewendick payroll for more than 40 years.

In the central Ohio market he says there is little need for high reach excavators anyway, as most of the work is close to the ground. The company does rely on excavator attachments such as pulverizers and shears to process the material on site before sending it for disposal and recycling. Where the future vision comes in is the realization of the importance of green building and LEED in the demolition industry's future.

Brownfields are another big market for demolition contractors, Loewendick believes. "Basically there is one half billion dollars sitting in a fund for clean up, and we can be an integral part of the environmental clean up," says Loewendick, who is also the current president of the National Demolition Association. He adds that for now the regulations prohibit the use of that fund for demolition. "The NDA is working with the EPA to change those regulations."

He also suggests that the Construction Materials Recycling Association and National Demolition Association need to keep working in tandem. "Together we handle the largest amount of debris in the country. The best way to increase recycling is to mandate the use of the product. As long as we keep producing the material and the recycler turns it into a spec product, it is a good marriage."

The author is associate publisher of Construction & Demolition Recycling and executive director of the CMRA. He can be contacted at [e-mail].