Have your next roofing tearoff recycled into asphalt... and SAVE money for your facility

Photo: Brent Wojahn, The Oregonian

Something to consider the next time your facility or office has a major roofing project... Owens Corning has a national program to recycle asphalt roofing (roll and shingle) into base material for asphalt. The program has actually been in the works since 2009, but Owens Corning started promoting it nationally in the last week or so.

The bonus: it may actually be cheaper to have that roofing recycled than it is to have it landfilled. According to Carrie Sturrock at The Oregonian (link below), in some cases, it is $20 LESS per ton to have shingles recycled than it is to have them landfilled.

It's one thing to keep this asphalt-based waste out of a landfill, but the fact that shingles which used to be landfilled are becoming a preferred component for road construction makes it a true win-win. If you've ever seen a roof tear-off, you know how much shingle and roofing waste goes into the dumpsters.

From Mary Mazzoni's article, linked below:
"Formerly, all of this material was landfilled — making it a sizable portion of the construction and demolition waste stream — but new technologies and innovative recycling programs are diverting shingle waste from landfills and transforming it into new asphalt roads."

To give you some perspective of how far recycling that roofing tearoff can actually go, Mazzoni states that "Shingle debris from one average home can help pave 200 feet of a two-lane highway." Pretty amazing.

So, for those facilities that have asphalt roll roofing or low-slope roofs, this might be a great program to participate in. It's the difference in where that rolloff of roofing material goes... into a landfill or into a road.

Resources:

How Do Shingles Become Roads - Mary Mazzoni

Portland's Northwest Shingle Recyclers grind oil from shingles for reuse as asphalt for roads - Carrie Sturrock

Here's the Owens Corning link to find a contractor in your area who actively participates in the shingle recycling program:
http://www.owenscorning.com/roofing/sustainable-roofing/shingle-recycling

The Construction and Demolition Recycling Association also has information on programs to recycle shingles, concrete and drywall http://www.cdrecycling.org/websites-links