WARREN, Maine — Peter Horch tried to think creatively about his midcoast company after a conference last year, but as he said, there is only one way to put a shingle on a roof.
The owner of Horch Roofing was out of ideas until one of his 20 employees called out of work one day, and he had to fill in. That day changed everything, and now Horch’s company celebrates Earth Day every day.
When Horch drove to the dump that day and unloaded some of the roof debris from jobs, he hadn’t been to the Camden dump for a while.
He remembered that in years past he had to back his truck downhill into the dump, but on that day, he drove the truck uphill to the trash pile. That’s when he realized he had to change the business.
“I’m driving on my own garbage,” he recalled thinking.
At that time, Horch Roofing was burying 4,000 pounds of roof debris — about three jobs — every day in Camden and Rockland dumps, about 1 million pounds a year.
Not anymore.
Horch built a concrete slab and walls to house the debris on company property. Then he hired a man with a truck to bring all of the waste to CPRC, a recycling company in Scarborough, once a week.
Now all of the old shingles Horch rips off roofs get ground up with other materials and turned into something usable. So far, Horch has paved about 150 feet of his company’s driveway with material made from his company’s waste.
“We offer material exchange,” said CPRC owner Jim Hiltner. “If you bring in a certain amount of waste materials we accept, we match them with an exchange of products back out.”
CPRC ships out 100,000 tons of repurposed material each year to customers throughout northern New England, according to Hiltner.
In return for about 15 roofs’ worth of shingles, Horch gets about 100 feet worth of crushed and recycled aggregates, or “C&R.” He uses the material, which is made of ground-up brick, cement and porcelain bound with asphalt from shingles, to pave his driveway.
“My goal is to distribute this material so people can use a recycled material [to pave their driveways],” Horch said this week, “but I don’t have [specific] plans for it right now.”
C&R starts as a loose, dirtlike substance with chunks of brick and cement in it. When the material is laid on ground, it requires heat from the sun and someone to drive over it a couple times to solidify it into a hard surface.
Horch has been impressed.
“We laid this on Thursday,” he said, pointing to the dark-brown surface under his boots. “It was sunny Friday. We had torrential rain Saturday, and a day later you don’t see any washouts.”
The dirt and gravel embankments where Horch hasn’t yet put down C&R did wash out that day.
C&R can be used as a filling material, but it usually is used for paving, according to Hiltner.
And though the recycling efforts have been rewarded with a sturdier driveway, Horch has had to raise his prices to make up for the increase in dumping fees. In 2009, when his trash was placed in a landfill, his dump fees totaled $30,000. This year, he projects spending twice that to recycle all his materials at CPRC.
He has to make up for that in his pricing to customers.
“It’s taking a $10,000 roof and turning it into a $10,700 roof. But we’re not putting 2 tons of debris in a landfill every day,” Horch said. “I think that our clientele likes that we are doing good. They’ll pay a little more.”
Horch’s company research shows that more than 100,000 tons of roofing waste from Maine ends up in landfills each year.
Horch hopes that people will go to his business because it is greener and that other companies will feel that they too must change.
“I feel like I’m going to make a difference,” Horch said. “It’s a headache now, but in the long term, the million pounds a year we dispose of is going to increase, and keeping it out of the landfills is good for everybody.”