At its Annual Meeting in March 2005, the CMRA handed out its first awards to honor the best in C&D recycling. Four judges evaluated the entries, and their decisions seemed to reward high recycling rates and longevity in the business.
Winners were named in four categories: Recycler of the Year, Mixed C&D Recycling, Concrete/Asphalt Recycling and Government Recycling Program.
Recycler of the Year went to Louis Sanzaro, president of Ocean County Remanufacturing, Toms River, N.J. Sanzaro, the first president of the CMRA, was innovative in getting his recycled concrete accepted by various state governmental agencies. He also changed the name of his company from “recycling” to “remanufacturing” because he felt it better described what Ocean County was doing with the material and because it allowed the firm to be reclassified by insurance agencies at a cheaper rate.
Darlene Chapdelaine of Patriot Hauling Company in Johnston, R.I., won honorable mention. When a major C&D recycler in Rhode Island with a shaky reputation was facing problems with the state environmental agency, she was able to get the business going forward again. She worked with the state to get a recycling operation on track by finding out exactly what permit they needed and then following the rules so they couldn’t stop her.
The winner in the Concrete Recycling category was Corell Recycling, one of the original members of the CMRA, and a company that has been recycling concrete and asphalt since 1994. Starting out at less than 25,000 tons per year, the operation in west Des Moines, Iowa, is now recycling about 275,000 tons per year out of one stationary plant, while developing the market for use of the products in such applications as sewer and water pipe bedding, concrete patch work, golf course cart path and parking lot base and cover material and, of course, as a road base in highway and road construction.
Zanker Road Landfill, one of the long-time C&D recyclers in the United States, won the award for Mixed C&D Recycling. Located in Northern California, Zanker is mostly a landfill in name only—when it reopened as a properly developed landfill in 1988, it had probably five to 10 years of life left. It now has nearly 20, as the operation recycles mixed C&D consistently in the high 90s percent rate, and almost none of it is ADC.
The two honorable mention facilities are doing their part to recycle C&D, but don’t have the history of the top award winner. Downtown Diversions in Los Angeles received honorable mention with its 80 percent recycling rate. Western Recycling, a Waste Management operation in Wilbraham, Mass., also took home an honorable mention. It is a highly automated plant that reduces wear on handling equipment. It also had a landscaping upgrade, which will be important in the future to improve the image of the C&D recycling industry.
Winner of the Government Recycling Program award was the well-known city of San Jose’s Construction and Demolition Diversion Deposit, or “seed,” program. Perhaps a granddaddy to most municipal recycling programs, this one works using an incentive-based deposit system that requires an assessment of a deposit from contractors before issuance of a building permit. To get some of that money back the contractor must either reuse the material or deliver it to a city-certified recycling center. The program now diverts more than 200,000 tons of mixed C&D materials per year, and could be considered a model for many other governments.