Chair Lauren Asfour kicked off the meeting on October 21st by welcoming Neil Mullen of McLanahan, the new Vice Chair for the committee and today’s guest speaker! Neil shared his background in the OEM side of the business. Next, committee meeting host Peter Doherty polled the group regarding the committee members’ interests and roles. Survey results were shared in real time which included the attendees’ business types, experience in the industry, geographic regions represented, and personal goals with respect to committee programming. It was wonderful to see that both new and seasoned professionals were joining our Aggregates Recycling Committee, the CDRA’s newest working group! 

Neil’s presentation, “Turning Concrete Waste Into Opportunity”, explored how current rates of industrialization have led to an increased need for waste reduction in concrete washout. Neil discussed the limitations of current practices by concrete producers, such as landfilling and producing wall blocks, and innovative solutions for recovering aggregate from concrete waste. an advanced wet processing system to recycle concrete washout by recapturing sand, gravel, and water, which can reduce waste and transportation costs. Testing has shown that the system can recover up to 98% of aggregates. Use of the system also results in less need for use of virgin aggregates. For areas in which sand reserves are harder to come by, this system could be quite important.

To close the meeting, Lauren introduced Hannah Newman from Hawkins Construction Company, who shared Hawkins’ need for RCA aggregate samples “as produced”, which will be used in determining durability and performance testing from various regions. Hawkins is happy to arrange for pickup. Reach out to the committee Chair to be connected with Hannah. And we look forward to seeing you on December 16th for our final meeting of the year.