Green Job Sites Have Less Waste And More Recycling
Grinding leftover wood, drywall, and cement can be done right on the job site with a multi-use portable grinding machine by Packer Industries. The resulting wood chips and ruble can be used as erosion control (wood chips), soil amendment (ground dry wall), and road base (cement, asphalt shingles, and drywall).
VIDEO TRANSCRIPT:
Peter Yost: Today we’re in Mapleton, Georgia—it’s just outside of Atlanta—and we’re here at Packer Industries and Patterson Services. Ken Patterson, thanks a lot for talking to us today. Ken: Thank you, Peter. What we do is manage construction waste for local building contractors. We decided to build a small machine that’s compact, easily transportable, that would do a variety of materials, and that would also get the metal out when it processed the materials.
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P: So, you’ve got things like wood fiber—that takes a certain type of machine. And you’ve got things like bricks. It’s not easy to design a machine that can process things from cardboard up to concrete blocks.
K: Absolutely. It isn’t easy at all. You need something with really high torque.
P: So, we’re on the job site. We’ve rounded all this stuff up, including wood waste, engineered wood as well, solid sawn, and we’ve got gypsum board. So, what do we do with those materials?
K: The wood waste, first of all, can be used as erosion control. That’s a big savings for the builder.
P: Drywall is just about 93 percent calcium sulfate or gypsum, and 7 percent paper,…
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One Comment
A pdf on Patterson's web site
A pdf on Patterson's web site describes segregating clean scaps of new, untreated drywall (no fungicide treated scraps), and grinding it up to make a soil amendment. That sounds like a good idea to me. But the video shows mixed scrap piles that look like they include materials torn out of old construction during renovation or demolition, as well as pallets. Without strict controls, that could include lead paint, asbestos drywall compound, and pressure treated wood. How does Patterson make sure that doesn't happen?
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