Dive summary:
- Roof shingles are normally difficult to recycle and are hard to decompose but one landfill found a way to give them new life by mincing the pieces into fine grit then using it in asphalt.
- All of the asphalt must be tested and the landfill must know the exact location from which it came.
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To pay for the new equipment needed to grind and sort the shingles, the landfill received a $20,000 dollar forgivable loan from the Iowa Department of Natural Resources.
From the article:
To the Plymouth County Landfill, the old shingles on your house are considered as good as gold.
That's because they take shingles and grind them up to be used in asphalt on county roads here in Siouxland.
Before getting ground up, the landfill tests the shingles for asbestos and makes sure it knows where they come from.
"We have to have the name, address, of each place of where it came from, and if it's a business it has to be tested before it gets here," said the landfill's manager, Mark Kunkel. ...
