Europe-based technology provider says its sensor product can distinguish between types A and B wood scrap.
The Tomra Recycling business unit of Norway-based Tomra Group says it has strengthened its offering for the global wood recycling sector by becoming “the first in the world to use deep learning, a subset of artificial intelligence (AI), in wood recycling applications.”
The company has combined its Autosort technology with its deep learning-based sorting add-on, GAIN, to deploy technology that can distinguish between and sort different types of wood-based materials, “significantly enhancing customers’ sorting and manufacturing processes,” according to Tomra.
The primary application for Tomra Recycling’s new system is sorting type A scrap wood, or non-processed wood pieces, from type B scrap wood, which consists of processed wood products such as MDF (medium-density fiberboard), HDF (high-density fiberboard), oriented strand board (OSB) and chipboard.
Tomra Recycling says it has been serving the global wood recycling sector for more than 10 years. The company’s X-Tract device is used by chipboard manufacturers to produce a clean recycled wood chip fraction by sorting and separating out metals and inert materials such as glass, stones and ceramics, says the company.
An increasing number of customers are looking to use higher purity level recycled wood in their production processes, according to Tomra, with many of them viewing engineered wood composites as materials to be removed.
Since such materials are not distinguishable using X-ray technology, the firm had to go beyond using X-Tract units, so its researchers developed the new deep learning method.
“Wood recycling is a fast-evolving market, with increasingly stringent legislation being introduced in a number of regions globally to move towards a more circular economy model,” remarks Philipp Knopp, a product manager at Tomra Recycling. “Our Autosort with GAIN solution will enable our customers to future-proof their operations as they will be better equipped to adapt and react to any future changes in the global wood recycling market such as new legislation. We are delighted to be the first in the market to offer this artificial intelligence-based solution.”
The pilot project recycled approximately 12,500 pounds of plastic to create a more durable parking lot at Meijer’s Holland, Michigan, supercenter.
In collaboration with Meijer, Dow has enabled a new paving technique using recycled plastic bags to create a more durable parking lot for the retailer’s Holland, Michigan, supercenter.
The recycled polymer modified asphalt (RPMA) parking lot is a three-phase pilot project that used approximately 12,500 pounds of postconsumer recycled plastic (PCR), which is the equivalent weight of 944,000 plastic grocery bags.
As a press release states, this project “brings recycled plastic bags full circle, and represents a long-term collaboration between two Michigan companies working toward a more sustainable future.”
“Meijer operates under the philosophy that to be a good company, we must be a good neighbor and that often means working with other like-minded companies on a common goal," says Rick Keyes, president and CEO of Meijer. “We are committed to lessening our impact on the environment and are pleased to partner with our customers and Dow in the largest in-state project of this kind to better demonstrate our commitment to a circular economy through recycling and reusing plastic to better ensure a more sustainable future.”
All of the recycled plastic used for the parking lot pilot project was deposited by Meijer customers through the retailer's in-store plastic film recycling program. In 2014, Meijer placed a collection bin inside the front entrances of each of its stores for customers to deposit clean, dry plastic bags and films, including single-use, bread, dry cleaning, produce and water softener bags. This year, Meijer says it expects to recycle 6 million pounds of plastics through this program.
"Lessening our impact on the environment through increased recycling efforts is an issue that's important to us, which is why we believe this pilot project is just one of the ways we can bring our current recycling efforts full circle while improving our customer shopping experience," says Vik Srinivasan, senior vice president of Properties and Real Estate at Meijer.
This pilot project incorporated numerous partners to take the recycled plastics and turn them into a resurfaced parking lot. PADNOS, a Michigan-based recycler, aggregated the Meijer recycled plastics and converted them into usable PCR. K-Tech Specialty Coatings, an Indiana-based asphalt emulsion company, modified the base asphalt binder with Dow’s new Elvaloy Reactive Elastomeric Terpolymer (RET) technology and PCR. Indiana-based Rieth-Riley, the construction contractor, produced the final hot-mix asphalt and paved the Meijer parking lot and gas station.
Dow began working on these types of projects in Indonesia in 2017, partnering with the Indonesian government toward its goal of reducing plastic waste in the ocean by 70 percent by 2025. In August 2021, Dow completed a RPMA public street at The University of Missouri.
Dow, headquartered in Midland, Michigan, has also completed two RPMA roads at Dow's Freeport, Texas site; two roads at the Dow Sabine River Operations where Elavaloy RET is produced; and four public roads and two parking lots in the Great Lakes Bay Region of Michigan—totaling approximately 14,000 pounds or more than 1 million plastic bags.
Florida Wood Recycling’s commitment to value has yielded reliable customers and a sense of purpose for owner Harvey Schneider.
Like many other transplants from the North, Harvey Schneider, 70, has found himself settled in South Florida. The difference is that it’s the mixed C&D and wood recycling opportunities, not the weather or beaches, that eventually lured Schneider down to the Sunshine State.
Schneider, who grew up in Quebec, got his start in recycling after dropping out of college. On a whim, he decided to invest in a Fargo dump truck and go door to door introducing himself to industrial business owners throughout Montreal. Eventually, Schneider began buying scrap from these clients, and since he had a truck, they started paying him to haul their waste as well.
This business evolved to Schneider processing wood waste to produce wood chips, including boiler fuel for a power plant in Chateauguay, New York. When the Okeelanta Power Plant in Belle Glade, Florida, was constructed in the 1990s, Schneider saw the opportunity to expand his company’s services to supply fuel to that market, as well.
After commuting back and forth from Montreal to Florida for years, Schneider finally decided to sell his Canadian operations and set up shop permanently in the Miami suburb of Medley in 1996.
Schneider, along with his son Jesse, run several waste and recycling businesses on a 10-acre property in the industrial heart of the city.
Through their Florida Wood Recycling operation, the father-son duo process incoming mixed C&D and clean wood. The company’s Medley Metal Recycling arm is responsible for buying and selling ferrous and nonferrous scrap, and its Recyclables Recovery division is the company’s roll-off hauling service that collects C&D, wood, yard waste and storm debris in the area via the company’s 300 dumpsters and 12 trucks.
“We do have different streams of material,” Harvey Schneider explains. “One of the streams that comes in is commingled C&D, which we run through a picking line, and we pick out the rock and the metal and the wood. And then another stream that we have is source-separated wood, which comes from manufacturers of roof trusses and palettes, and we get dimensional lumber from construction sites, as well. Then we have another stream which is yard waste, because with Florida’s tropical setting, there is a lot of yard waste, tree trimmings and branches—that’s a separate stream that comes in. Then we have a metal recycling facility where we buy and sell ferrous and nonferrous metals. So, it all fits together because it’s all diversified.”
With C&D materials alone, the company processes around 125,000 to 130,000 tons per year. When factoring in the wood and yard waste, this number approaches 200,000 tons per year, Schneider says. He notes that the company’s processing capacity depends on the material. For yard waste, he says the company is able work through 100 tons per hour. This drops down to around 50 to 60 tons per hour when processing C&D and anywhere from 50 to 70 tons per hour when processing clean wood waste.
Speaking about the company’s evolution in processing wood waste, Harvey says the company has become increasingly sophisticated, and selective, over the years.
“I think in order to create a product that’s quality, you have to have certain criteria in place,” he says. “So, certain materials we will not accept. For example, we don’t accept pressure-treated wood in this facility. When we started up our picking line, and we started manufacturing mulch, we worked with the University of Miami to develop best management practices for recycling facilities to be able to source clean, reclaimed wood.”
“The university developed a liquid, called a PAN Indicator stain, where you can put a just a drop of it on a piece of wood, and if it turns purple, it’s pressure-treated. If it turns orange, it’s fine,” he continues. “I also have an XRF gun where we can test the wood randomly to make sure that everything is clean wood that we use. If you go on the Florida Department of Environmental Protection website, they have a document on what they call best management practices for C&D recycling facilities to source clean wood, and we were instrumental in helping create that.”
Florida Wood Recycling and its sister companies are operated out of a 10-acre site in the heart of industrial Medley, Florida.
By being fastidious on insisting on clean wood and communicating this mandate to its customers, Schneider says the company can simply segregate this portion of the incoming material to be processed via its Morbark grinders.
For its mixed loads that are more unpredictable, the company employs a simple but effective system to properly sort materials.
In conjunction with manual sorters, the company uses a finger screener to divide material into three fractions—fines, middles (approximately 5- to 7-inch material and under depending on the stream), and overs (anything over 5 to 7 inches depending on the stream). This material is transported to A and B lines where a crossbelt magnet pulls out the steel before it heads to an air density classifier that blows the lights into a rejects pile headed for landfill while the heavy aggregates fall to the line to be collected. The A-line material is further picked by around three or four manual sorters who help divert the aggregates, metal and wood to four designated bays.
Through the company’s various outlets, the metal is sold to the scrap market, the wood is converted into mulch that the company delivers direct, and the aggregates are used primarily for lake fill for area quarries.
While the company’s sorting system has worked well for Schneider over the years, he says he has been communicating with Sparta Manufacturing Inc. VP of Sales Howard Fiedler regarding potentially updating the company’s line. He notes that the company previously worked with Fiedler during his tenure at Erin Recycling to install the equipment currently in use at the site.
“I installed the first A line in 2004, and I extended it and put the B line in in 2007,” he says. “The line is getting a little old and it’s going to be time to upgrade it in the near future.”
Schneider also says he is keeping a close eye on the evolution of C&D sorting robotic systems, in part, because of the success and efficiency he currently enjoys from robot-enabled equipment used to stack the bagged mulch the company produces.
“I’ve been watching the developments in C&D robotics for a while now,” he notes. “I currently have two lines with Kawasaki robots on them for stacking mulch, so I’m very familiar with the technology. There’s a learning curve, and with my current system, they’re deployed for a single task of stacking bags on pallets, but it’s not so simple when you’re picking C&D. I’m watching the developments, and I’m very curious to see where it’s going to go in the near future because I believe that that’s going to be the future of picking. The question is, is this technology capable of handling volume and at what cost? Like anything else, everything has to be cost-effective. It’s fine and dandy to spend millions of dollars for robots, but if you’re not going to make any money, it doesn’t work.”
By focusing on in-demand products like metal and wood—and shying away from those that are more subject to fickle commodity markets, like paper—Schneider says he has been able to find consistent outlets. Additionally, by insisting on creating products of value, he has cultivated a reliable base of returning customers.
“It doesn’t take a lot of intelligence to be successful as a recycler,” he says. “Yes, it takes a little bit of intelligence, but it takes a lot of hard work. Very often you have opportunities, and there are many people who get opportunities put in front of them, but they maybe don’t have the guts to reach out and grab them and say, ‘I’m going to do this.’ We are very, very forward-thinking and we’re always looking to try to improve what we do to become more efficient and create better products that the consumer wants. … You know, you take care of your customer, you give your customer a quality product and quality service at a competitive price, that’s the key to business.”
In addition to creating products of value, Schneider says investing in people has been pivotal for the company’s growth. Depending on the season, the company’s workforce can vary in size from 35 to 45 employees, many of which have been with the company for years.
“The key to the whole thing is to hire good people, pay them well and treat them with respect. My employees are like my family,” he says. “I take good care of my employees and I listen to what they say. If an employee comes in and says that we could be doing something differently, I listen and try to use those things to help me grow my business and make my business more efficient. It’s very important that you have a good staff and that you take care of them, and we’ve been fortunate to have very low turnover. I have people that have been working for me for 25 to 30 years here. It’s pretty rare in this industry.”
Despite having over five decades serving the recycling sector, Schneider doesn’t have plans to exit the business anytime soon. Although he’s come a long way geographically from where he started, his passion for the business is still close to home.
“The recycling industry—it’s quite interesting,” he concludes. “It’s a lot of fun, really. You know what, I’m 70 years old, and I still come to work every day. I love coming to work because every day is just more exciting than the last.”
This article originally appeared in the Nov./Dec. issue of Construction & Demolition Recycling magazine. The author is the editor of Construction & Demolition Recycling and can be reached at aredling@gie.net.
An abandoned limestone quarry in Colchester, Vermont, has been permitted to use C&D debris as fill material.
Vermont state regulators have ruled that filling an abandoned limestone quarry in Colchester with construction and demolition (C&D) debris won’t pollute a nearby river, reports The Burlington Free Press.
The 100-foot-deep quarry—which will be filled with crushed brick, concrete, asphalt, mortar and sewer-drain grit—will take roughly a decade to fill back o ground level, according to Richmond-based developer J. Hutchins Excavation Contracting.
Months of debate over potential groundwater contamination preceded the project receiving the greenlight, with the Natural Resource Board awarding an Act 250 permit to Hutchins and St. Michael’s College, the quarry’s owner, on Oct. 28.
As reported by The Burlington Free Press, the ongoing building boom in Chittenden County has created a growing demand for local places to dump C&D debris.
In the past, the 3-acre quarry was an active industrial site from the early 1800s until 1971. Limestone was crushed and processed into a soil amendment, as well as supplying raw materials for a wide variety of other products, including disinfectants, pharmaceuticals and photographic plates.
In the decades following its closure, the quarry filled with about 40 feet of water. When it was last drained in 2001, University of Vermont archaeologists documented the remains of old excavating equipment, cars and tires appliances.
CDI imploded two 350-feet steel girder arches that supported the bridge deck crossing Rattle Snake Canyon in Pinal County, Arizona.
Controlled Demolition Inc. (CDI), Phoenix, Maryland, performed the design for, and explosives felling of, two 350-feet steel girder arches that supported the Pinto Creek Bridge deck crossing Rattle Snake Canyon in Pinal County, Arizona, on Oct. 27.
The Arizona Department of Transportation (ADOT) opted to remove the bridge, which was first constructed in 1949, because “the Pinto Creek Bridge was built to standards in 1949; however, those standards no longer meet ADOT’s current minimum bridge guidelines or bridge guidelines required by the Federal Highway Administration and the American Association of State Highway Transportation Officials. As of 2018, the bridge had been in place for 69 years—notably longer than a typical bridge’s design life of 50 years. During the last several years ADOT [had] completed multiple maintenance projects on the bridge to extend its life. However, because of exposure to weather and continued traffic-induced vibration, the structure [had] reached the end of its useful life.”
A new bridge over the canyon adjacent to the old Pinto Creek Bridge was opened to the public in September.
ADOT noted that had it not replaced the bridge, the size and weight of allowable loads on it would need to be reduced, which would “negatively impact the area’s mining industry, interstate commerce and the traveling public.”
According to CDI, traffic on the adjacent bridge was reopened less than an hour following the felling of the structure.
ADOT anticipates the vast majority of the remaining work, including site restoration and cleanup, is on track for completion by the end of 2021.
Watch the video of the Pinto Creek Bridge implosion, courtesy of CDI: