YARD TRIMMINGS COMPOSTER, C&D RECYCLER BUILD NEW MARKETS

BioCycle September 2003, Vol. 44, No. 9, p. 52

Two St. Louis area companies are working individually and together to expand compost and mulch use.

Dan Emerson

JUNE, 2003 was one of the wettest months the St. Louis, Missouri metro area had seen in some time, with more than seven inches of rain. One silver lining in the gray clouds over eastern Missouri was that conditions were ideal for testing the erosion resistance of a new product made from a 50-50 mix of compost and ground, construction and demolition waste wood, developed by two partnering companies, Organic Resource Management, Inc. (ORMI) and Peerless Resource Recovery. Applied to a sloping 8,000 square foot test area at the Peerless C&D landfill, the material passed the test with flying colors. “We have had heavy downpours but our material hasn't budged a bit,” says Kim Wolterman, co-owner with her husband Jim of ORMI, which provided the compost. In contrast, the untreated, adjacent areas showed severe erosion.

This tale of two organics recyclers who have come together isn't just about the market opportunities for compost and mulches. It is also highlights how to build on existing infrastructure in a specific region to meet those market opportunities. One question that is getting asked more frequently is if the organics recycling industry can supply potential demand for compost and mulch-based products in markets like erosion control and storm water management. This partnership in the St. Louis region helps to answer that question in the affirmative.

CLOSED LANDFILL SPAWNS COMPOSTING SITE
ORMI has operated the Fort Bellefontaine Compost Center in north St. Louis County for ten years. The facility is located on a closed landfill owned by St. Louis County Parks, making it a public/private partnership. “The closed landfill was donated to the parks department, and not being certain of the best use for the site, an RFP was issued,” recalls Kim Wolterman. “We put in a proposal for a yard trimmings composting site, and won the bid. The parks department leases the land to ORMI and we also provide them with compost and mulch.”

The 4.9-acre composting operation handles 50,000 cubic yards of yard trimmings, brush and wood annually. Generators serviced include municipalities, landscapers, tree trimming contractors and land clearing companies. Incoming feedstocks are ground with a Morbark 1300 tub grinder, then placed into large static piles. “Piles are 20 to 30 feet high and about 250 feet long,” says Wolterman. “We have a high tip bucket, and also invested in conveyors to help stack the material.” Retention time in the piles is about 18 months, after which the compost is screened with an Erin Star Screener.

While ORMI started with yard trimmings because its initial focus was on composting, the company has expanded into mulch production as well. “As our marketing strategy has evolved, we saw the need for mulches, and started producing them as well,” she notes. “Our native regrind mulch is a very strong seller. It is made up of various native wood materials in the St. Louis area, and breaks down and becomes a soil amendment, which is different than the hardwood mulches.”

ORMI sells about 25,000 cubic yards of organic material per year, including compost, various grades of mulches and soil amendments. Customers include schools and universities, the St. Louis Zoo, Forest Park, golf courses, businesses, landscape contractors and private citizens. The company has two trucks with East live bottom trailers for bulk deliveries. It recently acquired Bouldin & Lawson bagging equipment. Bagged materials are sold both at the composting site and several retail locations.

To make maximum use of its equipment investments, ORMI offers off-site grinding and screening services. “We get hired by municipalities that operate their own sites but may not own a screen or a grinder,” says Wolterman. “Both the Morbark grinder and the Erin screen we have are portable.”

OPEN C&D LANDFILL SPAWNS RECYCLING OPERATION
In recent years, Peerless Resource Recovery has become a significant C&D recycler in Missouri, on a mission to steadily increase the percentage of waste material it can reclaim. At the end of 1997, George Behnen and his wife, Dale, bought out two partners to take over the landfill, located about 30 miles west of St. Louis, in the small municipality of Valley Park. The acquisition represented a career change for both - George owned a trucking business, while Dale had worked as a registered nurse for 20 years.

Soon after taking over the landfill in early 1998, the Behnens became aware of the abundance of recoverable material in the C&D stream being thrown away. In 1999, a waste stream analysis conducted by the Midwest Assistance Program and funded by the Missouri Department of Natural Resources (DNR) estimated that the Peerless landfill annually receives 146,000 tons of waste material - about 60 percent demolition, 32 percent construction and eight percent industrial solid waste. The wood fraction was estimated to be 21,000 tons in the construction stream and 19,000 tons in the demolition debris. Those numbers helped the Behnens decide to focus on C&D recycling, specifically wood, demolition roofing shingles and masonry materials.

To implement their recycling ideas, the Behnens have received about $600,000 in grant funding and support from the St. Louis-Jefferson Solid Waste Management District, the Missouri DNR and the St. Louis County Department of Health, enabling them to buy two Bobcats, hire staff and develop a recycling system. As haulers tip loads on the landfill face, pickers remove what they can before the remaining material is disposed. “This is not the most effective way to recycle,” Dale Behnen says, “but this is the last place that material has an opportunity to reenter the community before being buried.”

The C & D waste tonnage brought to Peerless each year includes approximately 25,500 tons of masonry. Large pieces of concrete are stockpiled and hauled from the landfill to an adjacent site, an abandoned sand and gravel operation. “That pit provides us with the capability of reclaiming land with this clean fill material,” Behnen says. About 2,500 tons of metal are delivered to Peerless annually. Aluminum, sheet metal and steel are removed.

Wood comes to the landfill in several forms. Peerless separates commercial land clearing green wood, and clean, untreated lumber and pallets, which are processed in a Vermeer tub grinder. Suitable wood in lengths of at least 4-feet is “returned to the real world as lumber, instead of grinding,” notes Behnen. Telephone poles are stored for use on farms as fence posts. Peerless provides waste wood from new construction to the Reynolds County Sheltered Workshop, where 40 employees with mental and physical disabilities produce and sell a range of items, including picnic tables, swings, benches, tool sheds, birdhouses, cabinets, shelving and children's chairs.

While Peerless receives about 4,800 tons of cardboard each year, and recently purchased a baler, the picker will often leave cardboard to be buried and pick a material that either saves more of its valuable landfill airspace or can be sold to a processor for more money. Peerless also has tried picking plastics for recycling, but has put that on the back-burner for now; dirt and other debris in the plastic loads caused problems for recyclers.

EROSION CONTROL PILOT
ORMI and Peerless' erosion control project was developed to address EPA's Phase II storm water directives that took effect in early 2003 (see “Compost and Storm Water Management - Tapping The Potential,” August 2002 and “Phase II Storm Water Rule In Effect,” April 2003). Briefly, Phase II requires construction sites of one to five acres to implement storm water management controls. Composted products and mulches are an effective Best Management Practice to comply with the requirements, but haven't been officially approved in many states. Last fall, the two companies obtained a grant through the St. Louis-Jefferson Solid Waste Management District. They originally planned to install the product using mulch blowing equipment, but since grant funds were less than expected, that application method was removed from the plan.

Two sites were chosen at the Peerless landfill, each with a 3:1 slope. A 50:50 mix of ORMI compost and Peerless mulch (ground land clearing and clean wood waste) were applied in a 6-inch blanket with berms at the top and bottom. The compost and mulch were mixed in the bucket of a wheel loader and applied with a Bobcat. “It wasn't that difficult to get it to a consistently uniform depth,” says Wolterman.

A second erosion control installation was done at a St. Louis metro sewer district's restoration site. This application called for vegetating the slope. “We applied grass seed then a 3-inch layer of the 50:50 mix of compost and mulch,” she adds. “We got grass to grow in July.” Adds Behnen: “The material not only withstood the June rainfall, but also a 'monsoon' on July 18, when 1.9 inches fell in an hour.” They observed that the product does not seem to require tackifier additives, due to the fiber binding between the compost and wood fibers. In the future, the companies are looking at decreasing the depth of the blanket to 3-inches to make the applications more cost-efficient.

RECYCLED PRODUCTS FOR HIGHWAY USE
ANOTHER innovative recycling project developed by Peerless Resource Recovery is diversion of asphalt shingles from landfilling for use in road paving material. Last year, the Peerless C&D landfill received about 27,375 tons of asphalt demolition roofing shingles for burial. “We have been on a 5-year mission to divert this material from landfills,” Dale Behnen explains. “These shingles are made of the exact same ingredients as the asphalt hot-mix used to pave roads.” To grind shingles, the Behnens use a Rascal grinder made by Universal Refiner Corp. The device's simplified design - it has a maximum of ten teeth, rather than 20 or more - makes it suitable for handling the abrasive sand-grains on the face of each shingle, and the sticky asphalt that “glues everything together when it heats.” Testing done by Peerless's partner in the venture, Pace Construction Co. of St. Louis, indicates a five percent mix meets road building performance standards, and also saves manufacturing costs. Behnen adds that U.S. landfills bury about 11 million tons of shingles annually.

However, the effort to expand shingles recycling is at a standstill because the Missouri highway and transportation departments would like to have more test results before adding the recycled material to their hot-mix specs, Behnen adds. “The missing piece to making recycling of asphalt roofing shingles a success may be in education and marketing to the paving industry and the departments who set standards for specs.”

In another project, Peerless is providing its processed wood a component of Earthblock, an alternative building product made of wood waste, fly ash and a binding agent. Developed by another St. Louis-based company, Encore Building Solutions, the product is currently undergoing ASTM and BOCA testing.

Copyright 2003, The JG Press, Inc.