Two for the price of one - Construction & Demolition Recycling

2022-06-18 22:31:03 By : Mr. Jerry Deng

Pacific Steel & Recycling relies on a Sennebogen Vario Tool to increase processing capacity.

When Great Falls, Montana-based Pacific Steel & Recycling decided that some of its smaller yards needed more processing capacity, the company went shopping for new material handlers.

Kelly Frantzich, equipment manager for Pacific Steel, was fielding requests to several OEMs for mobile shears mounted on a wheeled machine. The company struck luck when Colleen Miller, national account and sales manager for Sennebogen, Straubing, Germany, answered her request and suggested an 830 M paired with a new multi-function that the manufacturer had recently introduced in Europe.

As Miller explained to the Pacific Steel managers, the new Sennebogen Vario Tool would give their yards a mobile shear that could still perform traditional scrap-handling duties. Sennebogen describes the tool as an “oversized Swiss Army knife,” designed especially for scrap processing and demolition work.

A unique coupling system connects the boom and a custom stick to any one of several attachments, including shears, orange peel grapples, clamshell buckets, lifting hooks or a magnet without having to get out of the machine.

Frantzich says, “We were intrigued by the idea for some of our smaller yards where we don’t get full utilization of a shear machine and material handler. Or it might be a good fit for larger yards where we’re doing some offloading, plus we get the shear too. The Vario Tool is designed to complete all the required connections for each attachment automatically, so operators are able to switch from one to another, in two minutes or less, without leaving the cab.”

With the Vario Tool system installed on a wheeled Sennebogen 825, 830, or 835, Frantzich says having one machine able to do two jobs or more allows significant savings compared to a single-use machine that would otherwise be utilized only 15 percent to 20 percent of the time.

Jack Stoken, operations manager at Pacific Steel’s facility in Kalispell, Montana, agrees. Stoken’s yard was the first to receive one of the three Vario Tool machines that Pacific Steel has ordered.

“We are a mid to smaller sized yard for this company with our scrap iron business. We have a scrap handler, and we have a Genesis shear on another machine,” he says. “We handle a lot of shred here, with relatively little heavy iron. But we needed a little bit more capacity because we were falling behind in our processing.”

Stoken’s Sennebogen 830 M arrived this past September, equipped with the Vario Tool and two attachments: a Genesis 555 rotator shear and a hydraulic grapple. “Adding a new 830 with the Vario Tool attachment seemed to make sense,” Stoken says. “The 830, with its high-flow hydraulics circuit, has plenty of power to run the shear. It will be a scrap-handler most of the time, but it will also fill in as a shear. It’s less costly to buy one machine versus two; it gives us more options and it’s able to cover both of the other machines if one goes down.”

Stoken continues, “Our main demand is unloading customers, feeding balers and loading trucks. Right now, our shear is out of the yard on a large project, so we have the 830 filling in with the shear. This allows us to offer more services to our clients without sacrificing productivity in the yard. Changing the attachments is very easy and can be done in under two minutes We will be mounting a camera on the boom to give the operator a better look when coupling. It will get even quicker as they get more experienced with it.”

The staff in Kalispell is also pleased with their new unit, given the 830 M is larger than their older scrap handler. Operators say they appreciate the comfort of Sennebogen’s elevating Maxcab, and they appreciate its quiet running. The maintenance crew finds the machine accessible and easy to service.

“Colleen pointed out the effort that Sennebogen put in to make it user-friendly for us to maintain, where other OEMs want to bring their own tech out. That adds a lot of extra expense and time that doesn’t need to be there,” Stoken says.

Stoken adds that, along with the Vario Tool feature, service support was a deciding factor in going with Sennebogen. One of Stoken’s technicians is among a group of seven Pacific Steel staff who were enrolled in the hands-on factory training program at Sennebogen’s Training Center in Charlotte, North Carolina.

The yard is also supported by a local heavy equipment shop that now has a factory-trained Sennebogen mechanic on its team. Located just ten minutes from the Pacific Steel facility, they were quick to enroll in Sennebogen’s Authorized Service Provider (ASP) program.

“Over the years, they have done a great job for us,” Stoken says, and the same service crew can continue servicing all of the Kalispell fleet, he adds.

Pacific Steel has been working with Sennebogen machines in various locations since 2007. “Sennebogen has proven themselves to us,” says Frantzich. “They are in for the long haul; material handlers are all they do. It’s a good quality product.”

This year the association honors 11 recipients of the safety award.

The Construction & Demolition Recycling Association (CDRA), Chicago, has announced the 2022 Best Practices in Safety award recipients.  The awards will be presented at C&D World 2022, Atlanta, March 13-15. 

This year’s Gold Recipients include: 

DTG Recycle, Mill Creek, Washington; 

Lautenbach Recycling, Mount Vernon, Washington; 

Michael Brothers Hauling & Recycling, Pittsburgh; 

Premier Recycle Company, San Jose, California; and, 

R&B Debris, Hainseport, New Jersey; and, 

JR Ramon Demolition, San Antonio, Texas. 

The CDRA says construction and demolition recycling and related operations have inherent risk factors and the most successful operators have created a specific action plan to minimize those risks and create a culture of safety. The CDRA developed the Best Practices in Safety awards program to recognize companies that have achieved a high level of safety management and to identify a level of safety performance that will help C&D operators manage their business. 

For more information, email info@cdrecycling.org. 

Don Ross will replace Ben Harvey as chairman of the board of trustees for the organization.

The National Waste & Recycling Association (NWRA), Arlington, Virginia, has elected Don Ross to serve as chairman of the board of trustees and reelected Dave Call as its treasurer. Their terms will commence at the conclusion of the board meeting being held at WasteExpo in May.  

“I am excited to be working with Don in his new role as chairman with the enthusiasm and ideas that he brings to everything that he tackles,” says Darrell Smith, NWRA president and CEO. “Likewise, I am pleased that Dave will continue to serve as our treasurer. I look forward to working with Don and Dave as they both bring tremendous experience and I appreciate their perspective.” 

Ross is the vice president of McLaughlin Family Cos., Scranton, Iowa.

Call is the senior vice president for business development at Republic Services, Phoenix.

NWRA says it has traditionally alternated the chairmanship between its services and suppliers members.  

Ross will replace Ben Harvey, who is completing his sixth consecutive one-year term as chairman. Harvey will continue to serve as a member of the board.

“I congratulate Ben on his successful chairmanship during which he has led NWRA to unprecedented heights in financial performance, advocacy and safety,” Smith says. “His continued service on the board of trustees will help ensure a smooth transition.” 

The partnership offers additional, complementary system solutions to meet application needs in organics and construction and demolition.

ML Environmental Group, a Denver-based supplier of equipment and systems for processing solid and organics waste, has announced a partnership and exclusive United States distribution agreement with Scott Equipment Co., a New Prague, Minnesota-based manufacturer of the Turbo Separator and GypStream product lines.  

"When we consider a company and brand as a potential solution partner, the most important characteristics we look at are that our company cultures, values and visions align," says Brandon Lapsys, ML Environmental Group president. "Scott Equipment Co. checks all of those boxes and so many more. They have a world-class product that has been proven in the marketplace for nearly three decades."  

ML Environmental Group, the parent company to Komptech Americas and Plexus Recycling Technologies, says the patented Turbo Separator depackaging technology is a natural fit for Komptech customers in the food waste and organics recovery market. In addition, MLE customers have a new solution to process gypsum wallboard or drywall in the construction and demolition recycling market.  

According to the companies, benefits of this strategic partnership include:  

Komptech Americas customers gain the ability to implement preprocessing and separation systems for food waste depackaging into their organics waste processes.  

The Turbo Separator and GypStream systems effectively complement Komptech Americas' equipment technologies, giving a broader audience reach to both companies, regionally and nationally.  

ML Environmental Group is the exclusive dealer for Turbo Separator organics systems for composting and Gypstream drywall recycling systems in the United States, excluding California.   

"Our recycling systems, including both the food waste organics recovery system and the gypsum wallboard separation and recovery machines, position nicely with ML Environmental Group's vision to offer their customers an end-to-end solution," says Kevin Pedretti, business development and product marketing manager at Scott Equipment Co. 

New report backs deconstruction and recycling as beneficial in the cleanup process.

The United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has released a report highlighting what it calls “the importance of resiliency and effective planning for management of debris from natural disasters.”

The Resiliency and Natural Disaster Debris Workshop Report provides what EPA calls “key takeaways” from two virtual workshops held in 2021. The workshops were attended by people with different core focuses, including disaster debris planning and management, disaster response, environmental justice, zero waste, circular economy, deconstruction and green building according to the agency.

“The report published today has important implications for our Pacific Southwest region, especially for communities in coastal areas in California and Hawaii and the Pacific Islands,” says EPA Pacific Southwest Regional Administrator Martha Guzman. “Planning now to reduce disaster debris through resilient design, reuse, recycling, and composting can better protect vulnerable communities, support equitable disaster recovery and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.”

Recycling and landfill diversion are mentioned frequently in the EPA press release announcing the report. EPA says priorities in a disaster cleanup should include reusing materials that can safely be recovered, which reduces the embodied carbon from the greenhouse gas emissions used to produce, transport and dispose of new materials; advance planning and designing for adaptation to “empower communities to reuse, recycle and compost materials safely” following disasters; and deconstruction  (reusing building materials instead of demolition and landfill disposal), which “creates local disaster recovery jobs, construction industry job training and low-cost materials for rebuilding,” while also potentially reducing “the spread of lead-based paint dust and other toxics materials from post-disaster demolition of some older (pre-1978) homes and buildings.”

Disaster cleanups in recent years that led to considerable recycling activity include those following California wildfires and the cleanup in Texas and other Gulf Coast states after Hurricane Harvey.

Access to the full EPA report summarizing the workshops can be found on this web page.