Who needs landfills?
Web Posted: 12/15/2007 09:00 AM CST
Adolfo Pesquera
Express-News business writer
In a little English town, 17 miles from the port of Plymouth by the English Channel, Roger Sparling has upgraded his waste recycling plant; it now uses a machine he examined first-hand at Fort Hood, Texas
"This was the next step," Sparling said, in the evolution of recycling municipal solid waste. Sparling had the San Antonio-built machine installed the last week of October.
"When I first heard of it, I thought it was too good to be true," Sparling said. But after seeing a concrete crushing demonstration at the U.S. Army armored post, he added, "it satisfied me that it would do my job, and since I’ve seen it run at my place, I know it will revolutionize the waste handling industry in this counrty."
Akin to the inventions in Willy Wonka's chocolate factory, the PowerMaster ReCyclone suggests a childlike, magical solution. The big steel cylinder turns nearly anything it is fed into dry powder. Visualize a tornado without the rain, and you have the basic principle.
"This thing will grind almost anything but case-hardened steel," said Lila York, owner of San Antonio-based PowerMaster Corp.
York unveiled a new line of ReCyclones earlier this year, and expects a huge for it in the United States. Landfill costs are rising and landfill space is declining at an alarming rate.
Landfill fees for household and nontoxic commercial garbage range from $21 to $42 a ton in Bexar County. That's a bargain compared to the United Kingdom and much of Europe.
"Sixty pounds sterling a ton, that's what I pay to dispose in a landfill," Sparling said. "That's $124 a ton. And the cost is rising every year well over the rate of inflation."
York estimates that 25,000 ReCyclones distributed across the United States would make general waste landfills virtually obsolete. York's claims seem hard to believe, but the proof is in the dry, fluffy rubbish, or as Sparling puts it: "In this business, the way you make your money is by not spending it."
Almost everything processed through the ReCyclone would be reusable as compost, sand, other landscape covers or energy products such as diesel from plastic or coal substitutes from scrap wood.
"People want turnkey solutions," York said. "So we don't just sell them the ReCyclone. We custom-build systems tailored to a specific use. Someone might call and say, 'I want to turn chicken poop into fertilizer.' I had a call about turning glass into sand to put on beaches; we can grind it as fine as they require it, sometimes as small as baby powder."
John Hergert is sales director for PowerMaster in San Antonio. He estimates the machine can recycle two-thirds of the garbage that otherwise would go to landfills.
The installation at Sparling Recycling attracted British media and industry experts. PowerMaster is currently fielding inquiries from Europe and island states, including New Zealand, Malta and Sri Lanka.
Mechanically, the ReCyclone is described as a durable — there's just one moving part — gyroscopic grinder with four chambers that spin air, making objects in the air crash into each other.
Depending on the size of the unit, ReCyclones are priced from $300,000 to $500,000. But sold as a turnkey system, with conveyor belts and other processing equipment, the average sales contracts are in the $1.5 million range. CCC Group Inc., a heavy-metal fabricating plant in San Antonio, is building them and has capacity to make 40 ReCyclones a month.
York has realized she doesn't know the full potential of the ReCyclone, and she's determined to keep her options open. A South American company has inquired about using it for e-waste; the theory being that if it can crush electrical components to dust, separating valuable elements such as gold and platinum would be much easier.
"PowerMaster allows us to bypass composting," John Marlin, a west coast fertilizer company said. "Everything goes from intake to finished fertilizer at high-speed. We produce a ton every five to six minutes."
