New recycling plant is located in Portland, Oregon.

Portland, Oregon-based Urban Gypsum has announced the opening of a 75,000-square-foot drywall processing and recycling plant in that city.

The company’s new facility can separate the paper backing from the gypsum material and create a fine gypsum powder. The material produced is expected to be used as an agricultural soil amendment and plant nutrient.

“We’re excited to be bringing specialized recycling technology to the Pacific Northwest,” says Casey Lane, Urban Gypsum’s president.

Urban Gypsum has been created in partnership with Portland-based Willamette Construction Services Inc., and Lane says that company’s experience in previous decades prompted it to explore drywall recycling options.

“Our organization has been in the construction industry for more than 40 years,” says Lane. He adds, “Over that time, we’ve seen an excessive amount of gypsum going to landfills and believed it was time to invest in an environmentally beneficial solution. Our high-quality gypsum will go a long way toward supporting farmers and the agricultural industry.”

RTS announced a partnership with MLS’ Philadelphia Union to manage waste services for Talen Energy Stadium.

Recycle Track Systems Inc. (RTS), New York, announced a multi-year partnership with MLS’ Philadelphia Union as the exclusive company to manage waste services for the 18,500-seat Talen Energy Stadium in Chester, Pennsylvania. RTS’ first order of business is helping to salvage the existing soccer field’s soil, which will provide 93 tons of reuse for composting or fill for construction projects.    

In addition to readying the stadium for a brand-new field, RTS’ LEED-accredited team will work closely with the staff to support proper education and communication on waste separation and diversion practices. RTS will also support Philadelphia Union in fan engagement, including in-stadium signage, proper branding on all waste receptacles and an educational pregame video to encourage fan participation in recycling during events.

“We’re excited the Philadelphia Union recognizes the need to initiate a recycling plan that will replicate existing green sports stadium waste standards and help mitigate future impacts to the overall environmental footprint,” RTS co-founder and CEO Greg Lettieri says. “This is another terrific example of the continuing work of Philadelphia-area businesses and organizations taking steps to be more sustainable.”   

As part of the overall sustainability plan, RTS will also manage the waste streams at Philadelphia Union’s state-of-the-art indoor practice facility housed in the historic Annex building adjacent to Talen Energy Stadium. The 16,500-square-foot building includes a weight training area, physical therapy and sports science development area, nutrition center, locker rooms and offices.

“We are thrilled that RTS is a part of the Union family,” Philadelphia Union Senior Vice President Jean-Paul Dardenne says. “Not only are they the leaders in their field, but the Union and RTS share the passion to give back to the community.”

The wide-ranging recycling plan at Talen Energy Stadium is a result of more sports stadiums addressing the enduring challenges of sustainability. Since 2017, the U.S. Green Building Council identified at least 30 LEED-certified sports venues in use or underway in the U.S., and the organization said that number is growing.

The Union is the second professional soccer team RTS has partnered with, following on the heels of its deal with Washington-based D.C. United, which operates out of Audi Field. RTS also manages services at other sports facilities including Nationals Park, Washington, D.C.; Citi Field, Queens, New York; and Barclays Center, Brooklyn, New York.

The 52-floor building is the tallest building to undergo a planned demolition.

Demolition permits have been filed to bring down JPMorgan Chase’s headquarters in New York City. The 52-floor building, which stands 707 feet tall and encompasses 1.5 million square feet, is the tallest building to undergo a planned demolition in history, according to City Realty.

Full demolition is scheduled to begin in early 2019, as JPMorgan Chase plans to move its headquarters to a new 2.5-million-square-foot skyscraper that will stand at least 1,400 feet tall and encompass 70 floors once completed in 2024. The design of the new headquarters is being led by London-based Foster & Partners, who reportedly will seek LEED certification. The project is expected to create more than 8,000 construction jobs.

Construction of the current headquarters was completed in 1961. The building was originally designed by Gordon Bunshaft and Natalie de Blois of Chicago-based Skidmore, Owings & Merrill. For nearly five decades, the headquarters stood as the tallest building designed by a woman.

Maine contractor to build second site, create 70 new construction jobs.

SnapSpace Solutions Inc. (SSI), Brewer, Maine, loaded a fully constructed building onto a jumbo jet Saturday at Bangor International Airport. The restroom structure was commissioned by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to aid children and families after a typhoon devastated Saipan in the Mariana Islands.

SSI, which makes structures from recycled steel shipping containers, says the building will allow children to return to school for the first time since October while the island rebuilds.  

“These restroom units were specially constructed for the school system in Saipan. Children will finally be able to return to school in this devastated country,” SnapSpace CEO Chad Walton says. 

The structure marks SSI's first FEMA contract and gives a glimpse of the company’s recent growth, says Walton, who is starting to build a new manufacturing plant in Florida to better serve the East Coast.

Some estimates suggest 11 million shipping containers made from recycled steel are unused across the globe. Walton, a creative entrepreneur, saw the opportunity in 2003 to recycle intermodal steel building units (ISBUs) into tiny homes, storage units, restrooms and disaster relief structures, while helping the economy.

Walton says SSI brought hundreds of construction jobs to the Maine area after the ZF Lemforder plant closed in 2010. In the future, SSI plans to recruit and train 75 new employees and subcontractors. The company, which has built everything from a high-end boathouse to a retail incubator in Portland, aims to “broaden the public’s opinion of repurposed shipping containers.”

“ISBU technology is on the forefront of efficient, durable and cost-friendly structural architecture, and increasing demand has resulted in a hiring plan that creates many new direct jobs for Mainers,” SSI says.

Using recycled shipping containers allows SSI to cut down on cost and the time it would take to create a traditional project. SSI says container homes can be assembled in “weeks rather than months.”

Aside from the Florida manufacturing plant, the company also has capacity in Connecticut and South Carolina and plans to double capacity at the Maine facility.

Brien Walton, director of Husson University's Center for Family Business, who works with the company on finding “Opportunity Zones,” says SSI’s revenue increased 550 percent in 2018. He says SSI is a “quiet company that’s about to roar.”

The company’s innovative, eco-friendly processes resulted in SSI receiving an award from Dwell Magazine's Best of Design 2018 competition for innovative buildings and multiple federal contracts for disaster relief.  

Walton calls building the structure for children in Saipan a “milestone” in SSI’s history.

“SnapSpace Solutions and our team were able to land our first FEMA contract after several years of hard work and this building is the culmination of our efforts,” Walton says.

How GFL Environmental’s merger with Waste Industries is changing the waste management landscape in North America.

GFL Environmental made waves Oct. 10 when the Toronto-based waste management company announced it would be merging with Raleigh, North Carolina-based Waste Industries. The completed merger, which was announced Nov. 15 with Waste Industries holding a total enterprise value of $2.825 billion, was celebrated by the participants as the creation of the largest private environmental services company in North America, encompassing operations in all Canadian provinces (except Prince Edward Island) and 20 states in the U.S.

The combined company will operate 98 collection operations, 59 transfer stations, 29 material recovery facilities (MRFs), 10 organics facilities and 47 landfills with a total staff of more than 9,000. Together, the company will service four million residential solid waste customers and 135,000 commercial and industrial solid waste customers.

While GFL has been a significant player in Canada’s waste management sector since 2007, the move marks the company’s first widespread entry into the U.S. market.

“Waste Industries will more than double GFL’s current footprint of operations in North America, adding collection, transfer station, materials recovery and landfill operations in fast-growing United States markets (including North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Colorado, Tennessee, Virginia and others), growing our customer base and forming an extended platform from which GFL can continue to execute on our proven organic and acquisition growth strategy,” GFL founder and CEO Patrick Dovigi, who will continue as president and CEO of the combined company, said in a statement at the time of the deal. “Waste Industries strongly complements GFL’s brand with an over 47-year history of providing excellent customer service to its local communities and has a management team with a proven track record of harnessing technology, processes and systems to drive operating efficiencies. We are excited to welcome the management team and the more than 2,850 employees of Waste Industries to the GFL family.”

According to Dovigi, although the announcement of the merger was sudden, the blockbuster deal has been a long time in the making.

“We’ve known the Waste Industries team dating back to 2015 thanks to common ownership between the two companies back with Macquarie [Infrastructure Partners] being the biggest shareholder of GFL and of Waste Industries,” Dovigi tells Waste Today. “And back in 2015 and 2016, we got to spend a lot of time with the Waste Industries management team looking at and replicating some of their systems and back office functions as we were building out our infrastructure.”

Dovigi says the common shareholder dynamic between the two companies and the relationships formed over this period were instrumental in laying the groundwork for the merger.

“It was just an easy fit and easy transition, and I think the timing was right for both companies,” Dovigi says.

Leading up to the merger, the companies worked to get to know each other’s businesses and consolidate IT, treasury, health and safety, legal and other back office processes to streamline operations.

During this time, the company also worked to establish its executive team.

Among the most prominent moves beyond Dovigi’s appointment, GFL announced that Waste Industries former chairman and CEO Ven Poole will now serve on the board of directors and retain certain senior employment responsibilities for the U.S. solid waste operations. Additionally, former GFL EVP & COO Luke Pelosi has been appointed EVP & CFO of the combined company to replace David Bacon, and Waste Industries EVP & COO Greg Yorston will take on the same role for all of the company’s solid waste operations in Canada and the United States.

Dovigi says that although the merger includes some key personnel changes in the corporate office, it will be business as usual for most Waste Industries and GFL employees.

“[The merger] doesn’t change anything. Obviously both companies have great regional management and none of that’s changing,” Dovigi says. “I think for the employees of both companies, that continues to provide more stability for them. Thanks to having a business with more size and scale, we think it yields and lends itself to more stability, and most importantly, it leads to more career opportunities for those to advance in the organization. The ability to move between districts in different regions, and our philosophy of building and promoting from within, is going to prove out to be a great opportunity for all employees involved.”

Dovigi says that GFL and Waste Industries will continue to work through the merger over the course of the next calendar year to fully integrate the companies.

“Over the next nine to 12 months, we’ll fully execute these plans and move forward as one cohesive group,” Dovigi says.

Dovigi says that while there are differences between serving customers in the U.S. and Canada, specifically in terms of the importance of vertical integration in the States, he doesn’t anticipate a substantial learning curve acclimating to new solid waste markets. The major challenge, Dovigi says, will be understanding and navigating the current recycling climate.

“What we’re seeing is a higher focus on sustainability and recycling, and obviously with the recent historic changes to how the business has operated, particularly around the single-stream market [due to disruptions from the China ban], I think that business has sort of done a complete 180,” Dovigi says. “I think we in the waste industry have to be focused on how we’re going to achieve the diversion goals of both large companies and municipalities. That’s going to be a challenge.”

To meet the material quality specifications that are required today, Dovigi says the company is currently focused on retooling its MRFs with the latest technologies to better sort incoming materials. He also says that the company aims to promote proactive diversion throughout the waste stream by better educating citizens and corporate customers on recycling best practices.

“In Canada, we’ve historically taken a little bit of different approach around landfilling,” Dovigi says. “There’s been a lot more focus specifically around organics and food composting. Going forward in the U.S., we want to find other alternatives to keep volume from going to landfills and to manage the sustainability initiatives of people, municipalities and large corporations. It definitely starts with the consumers and education on what should go into the recycling bin based on what can actually be recycled.”

According to Dovigi, the merger comes at the right time for GFL in its strategic mission to build off its recent growth in the Canadian market.

“If you looked at what was done in Canada over the last 11 years, we’ve basically built out infrastructure across every market, and I think things are running like a fairly well-oiled machine in terms of the infrastructure platform that we have here,” Dovigi says. “So, we felt it was a good time to look at doing something a little more transformational in the U.S. around a large-scale platform similar to what we’ve done in Canada, where we’ve done two or three large platform acquisitions and built out the rest of the business behind it.”

In addition to the Waste Industries merger, Dovigi pointed to GFL’s recent acquisition of Future Environmental as part of the company’s strategy to expand its North American presence into the U.S.

Based in Mokena, Illinois, Future Environmental is a provider of environmental services to the petroleum, pipeline, utility and chemical markets in the Midwest.

“With a liquid waste services company, we can really create a one-stop shop for all of our customers’ needs, and the recent purchase of Future Environmental is our first large U.S. acquisition in that space,” Dovigi says. “We’ll now be able to cross-sell between the various lines of our business and differentiate ourselves a little bit by offering the customers, particularly on that side of the business, a resource for all their waste needs.”

Dovigi says that GFL will continue to pursue M&A opportunities to expand its footprint in North America in the coming years. The key, he notes, is finding partners like Waste Industries that check all the boxes of what the waste management company is looking for.

“M&A has obviously been a large part of what we’ve done over the last 11 years, and I don’t think that’ll change,” Dovigi says. “Everybody has a little bit of a different lens when they look at M&A opportunities. For us, it’s No. 1 about if the acquisition fits in culturally with what GFL stands for. We look at culture and we look at certain geographies and regions that tick the box of where we want to be, but obviously reputation of the companies has to fit within what we’re doing.

“I think largely we’re in the geographies we want to be in with our presence in 20 states in the U.S. as well as the nine provinces in Canada we operate in, and we want to continue densifying our existing region to continue to grow and really focus on the core market we’re in today. That will be largely where we focus. Obviously solid nonhazardous waste is the biggest market, and then recycling and disposal services, but we will continue to focus on acquiring businesses that fit within that model in the markets it makes sense.”

The author is the editor for Waste Today and can be contacted at aredling@gie.net.