Recyclers charge lower tipping fees and grind up asphalt shingles for reuse in hot-mix pavement.
Roof tear-offs account for an estimated 11 million tons or about 53 million cubic yards of landfill waste each year. And, according to the Environmental Protection Agency, asphalt shingles represent up to 10% of residential jobsite waste. These are all big enough figures to stimulate developing markets for recycled
roofing shingles. The primary reuse is in hot-mix asphalt for paving roads, and some is also used in cold-patch formulations for fixing potholes. Old shingles are also sometimes ground up and mixed with gravel to help control dust on unpaved roads.
For roofers there are real advantages to recycling, explains William Turley, executive director of the Construction Materials Recycling Association (CMRA). “In some states it is easier to recycle shingles than to dump them in the landfill. Where recycling facilities exist, they are often located closer in town, so there's less trucking involved. Most facilities that recycle also charge a lower tipping fee.” The cost averages around $30 per ton or roughly $10 less per ton than ordinary construction waste. Roofers will need to separate out wood and other construction debris, but Turley says most roofers just make a separate pile, which is usually small, and throw that on top of the shingle load so it can be pulled off at the recycling facility.
Reuse Markets Reluctant
The biggest obstacle will be finding a recycling facility that accepts shingles. Less than 5% of the shingles that are torn off roofs get recycled. Turley says the reluctance is coming from the reuse markets more than from roofers. Pavers are sometimes skeptical about using deteriorated asphalt of an unknown quality, and may have concerns about asbestos in old roofing. Turley maintains the asbestos worries are overblown.
Asbestos was last used in shingles more than 30 years ago, and just 1% of the shingles made then contained any asbestos, which amounted to less than 1% of the shingle's composition. Nevertheless, there remains a small chance that old roofs today could have some asbestos content.
Most recycling facilities only visually inspect the material and will reject a load if the shingles “look” too old. But some facilities may require roofers to show test results to verify that the load is asbestos-free, which would certainly curb a roofer's enthusiasm for recycling.
Turley urges roofers to visit www.shinglerecycling.org where the CMRA will continue to post new information about testing and asbestos regulations as it becomes available. “It's really not that big a deal,” he says.