Our August 19th Aggregates Committee meeting saw Board member Lauren Asfour of Posillico Materials take the helm as Chair for this meeting. Congratulations, Lauren! She shared her short- and long-term goals for the activities of the committee and asked members about their backgrounds and areas of expertise (such as soil and asphalt, MRF operations, etc.). She also welcomed new members to the committee.

This meeting focused on contamination in new loads of unprocessed material. The extent of the contamination can sometimes be misunderstood, and the sources of contamination may vary greatly. It’s important for companies to identify contaminants effectively and as early as possible. The group discussed the importance of a vetting process for new loads and the steps they may take during the vetting process. For example, a number of members found that “the smell test” was quite effective in ensuring that loads with minimal contamination were being accepted. Others mentioned specific types of contaminants that would result in non-acceptance of a load. Still others used facility-specific checklists or requested testing documentation before they would accept new loads. How strict or lenient you are is entirely up to the recycler. Even with an effective vetting process, recyclers will need to address some level of contamination in their loads. Members shared the various ways they dealt with contaminants, such as manual or optical sorters, magnets, picker lines, and similar methods. 

Then Board member and speaker Brandon Lapsys of Viably, a leading distributor of recycling, depackaging, conveyor and grinding systems, discussed contamination in all types of aggregates, the kinds of job sites from which aggregate product is typically supplied, how moisture can affect the product, various contaminant removal options (both manual and automated), and some typical process flows for facilities based on their setup. He highlighted the use of “air magnet” technology and its ability to remove light material from aggregate streams using various applications, drum separators with the ability to separate light from heavy streams, the cleaner end products that can be derived from optical sorting, and special handling of the lights fraction in Europe, where the lights may be used in a refuse-derived fuel process which removes any PVCs or chlorine-type plastics and then shredded to make fuel for cement industry applications. Brandon noted the desire of many to eliminate the dumping of aggregates in landfills, excess hauling, or otherwise disposing of the product where markets clearly exist for the processed material.