print this article | 
e-mail this article | 
comment Wallboard Recycling Monster Arrives from Europe
Very little gypsum wallboard made in the U.S. contains gypsum recycled from other wallboard. The recycled content that is included in wallboard is almost universally synthetic gypsum from coal-burning power plants (a pre-consumer recycled material), and when wallboard scraps are diverted from landfills they are typically ground into soil amendment. A new technology now being imported from Denmark by Gypsum Recycling America, LLC (GRA), could change all that.
Based on what you have seen and read about this project, how would you grade it? Use the stars below to indicate your assessment, five stars being the highest rating.
GRA began operations in February 2002 as a subsidiary of the Denmark-based Gypsum Recycling International A/S. The international firm, with operations or subsidiaries in Scandinavia, Holland, and Great Britain, owns gypsum recycling technology that is packaged in a large, self-contained recycling machine. This machine consumes wallboard scraps and excretes relatively pure gypsum powder and paper fragments. Rather than replicating this expensive technology at each location, GRA moves the machine from warehouse to warehouse on three or four trailers. A single machine processes scrap wallboard throughout Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, according to Sandy Mulkern, a business development manager at USG Corporation who is helping get GRA up and running.
The gypsum resulting from this process is clean enough that new board can contain up to 25% recycled gypsum without any changes to the process or finished product, according to Mulkern. USG is helping to finance this project but doesn’t expect it to turn a profit for several years. Both U.S. Gypsum (a USG subsidiary) and National Gypsum have committed to purchasing the recycled gypsum powder from GRA. The paper is tentatively slated for use in ceiling tiles by Armstrong Building Products.
William Turley, executive director of the Construction Materials Recycling Association, is taking a wait-and-see attitude, noting that gypsum “is the most difficult material to recycle in the C&D [construction and demolition] waste stream.”
“All C&D recyclers would be delighted if this works, but it hasn’t proven itself yet in the American market, which is very different from the European market,” Turley adds.
GRA is currently accepting clean wallboard scraps at its main warehouse in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and in Hollbrook, Massachusetts (on Cape Cod); it is setting up three other locations around the state in the hopes of having a reasonable meal ready when the machine arrives in July 2006. While GRA is taking only clean wallboard scrap from new construction for now, by late 2007 the company hopes to have systems in place to accept used, painted wallboard from deconstruction projects.
del.icio.us
