Crown Partners
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Finding Markets for Recycling Green Waste
By Rick Howland
There will be waste, always – the economy notwithstanding. The question is how to deal with it.
As landfills close, the environmental movement grows and materials become both scarce and expensive, tree waste has ceased to be, well, waste. What a decade ago was trash has evolved into a raw material, a renewable natural resource that can deliver profits to tree care companies in many ways.
Over the past few years, TCI Magazine has written about the profit possibilities of recycling green waste. The first was finding ways to save money by reducing volume. The next step was finding ways to turn green waste into products, including firewood, mulch and energy-related products such as those used by co-generation plants for steam and electricity and pellets for wood heating units.
Now, the markets have reached the point where, instead of looking for places to dump waste, you really might want to think about collecting it – yours and anyone else’s you can get your hands on. The market has never been better for profiting at both ends, getting paid for trimming and removing trees and branches, then turning around and selling the residue.
This concept is not new to Rich Kingsborough, president of Kingsborough Atlas Tree Surgery, Inc. in Santa Rosa, California. “I have always been one to take advantage of every aspect of green waste, always considered our byproduct chips as an asset. Industry-wide, I feel it’s been, and still is, an underutilized asset.
“I started years ago with little equipment and a small chipper, and I bought a small shaker screen and began to sell and market recycled chips as a mulch,” he explains. “If you run chips through a 2-inch shaker screen, you get rid of oversized material, and the end product looks very good – especially if it composts a bit … not fully, but using the natural composting temperature of 140 degrees, the heat turns material a nice brown. We’ve found this to be a popular, natural color.”
“Then, I stuck my neck way out and bought a loader and $90,000 screen. As we grew, and bought more equipment and did larger
jobs, giving us more of this byproduct, we got a trommel screen (a cylindrical screen used to sort material by size, such as ore, rock and, of course, wood chips). I never wanted to sell retail, but I wanted to move a lot of product that was nice looking but inexpensive for wholesalers who could buy in bulk and mark it up. Things started to take off, and now we produce about 300,000 cubic yards of mulch, just from our own tree waste. We don’t take in waste from others, because we want to control what is brought in. We know where it is from and have no bad stuff with foreign materials in there,” Kingsborough says.
Right now, about 75 to 80 percent of the mulch he produces goes to large landscape contractors or to wholesalers who may turn it into yet another added value product or use as it is. He sells as little as 100 yards at a time. Though the business covers much of California, “people who buy are local, near Sonoma county. We’ve priced it cheap to keep it moving,” Kingsborough says. “We’re keeping green waste out of the landfill, and the process does not take a whole lot. Hopefully, for others, you’ve made your profit from a tree job and now have free material to turn into extra income.”
Kingsborough explains that from his first simple mulch recipe, his company now makes five different products, all from his own tree jobs, which can give other TCIA companies food for thought. Largely a Vermeer user with equipment running the gamut from towable chippers to huge grinders, like the TG700 tub grinder and TX700 horizontal track grinder, Kingsborough says nothing recyclable goes to waste.
“When material goes thru a grinder, it’s shredded, and through a chipper, you get chips that are nicer looking. We keep material separate, ground or chipped raw materials. We’ll re-grind with a tub or horizontal grinder, then either sell material like that or further run it through a screen to sift out the 3/8-inch and smaller materials, which people love to add to topsoil as a filler,” he says. Finished products include unscreened ground or chipped material, screened 2-inch ground or chipped material, or the 3/8-inch-or-less material.
They key, he says, is having room in the yard. You can start right out of the chip truck by stockpiling a few hundred yards of material to compost. Then invest in a small screen to get out oversized material. The result is a nice, saleable product that doesn’t take more than a few weeks to “cook” and turn brown.
If sold at retail, Kingsborough says, you can be looking at a return of $15 to $20 a yard, but people only want two and three yards here and there. However, that presents an opportunity to get more tree business while you are delivering, to sell more tree services to more clients. “And mulch is great for the trees!”
At wholesale, Kingsborough says, you might expect $5 to $7 a yard in large bulk. “But remember, the price reflects that we are in competition with lumber mills.”
“Another thing,” he says, “is that in a lot of jobs we do, we bring a lot of material directly to the co-generation facilities. We may not get paid as much as if we reprocess and sell to a landscaper, but we can get as much as $20 to $25 a dry ton and don’t have to haul back to our yard, which may be up to four hours away.”
How much does this recycling of green waste add to his bottom line? Right now, about 10 percent, he says, “but you have to factor in that this is 10 percent that’s not expected and we don’t have to pay to go to a landfill. Though we don’t push the mulch, people love it and come back. We sell more and more every year.”
Stacy Hughes is vice president of Terry Hughes Tree Service in Gretna, Nebraska. “We started in 2000 and are currently just doing the mulch thing. But given the market, in the future we foresee expanding into other opportunities for the recycling stream and applying our knowledge to recycling construction, demolition and yard waste.”
“Here in the Midwest we don’t see a lot of demand for wood waste in biomass. Most of that is derived from agricultural products and we are starting to play with that. There aren’t a lot of trees here, as there are on the East and West Coasts. So, we are looking to expand by taking in more waste from producers other than ourselves. We now take in wood and other green waste and want to look into recycling yard waste.” That will be nudged along by environmental laws, he explains, that encourage recycling and discourage dumping.
The key, Hughes says, is to get as much money as you can on both sides of recycling to make recycling worthwhile. That includes getting paid to take in material and profit from a finished product. One of the challenges will be to get the tree care professional to move off the “competitor” mindset where they would prefer to pay $100 to dump waste at a site versus pay someone such as Hughes $50 to take in the same material. “It isn’t competitive if we all look at this as a cooperative venture.”
Unlike Kingsborough, who prefers to utilize only his waste, Hughes says just about any tree waste is of value, since it arrives already chipped and ready to process.
With regard to where the market opportunities lie for recycled tree waste, chipper and grinder manufacturers seem to have a pretty good handle on things. Todd Roorda, environmental solutions specialist at Vermeer says, “As far as different avenues go, one thing that I would add is that a new and growing market is composting. We see a lot of grinders going to composting yards or, conversely, compost material being shipped to grinding facilities for processing. We also see chippers going to compost yards. This is an awesome avenue for disposing of chips in bulk. Depending on the compost yard, some you have to pay to drop, others may pay you. I’ve seen it both ways. Others take it free,” he adds.
Composting differs from mulch in that mulch is a landscaping decorative and a moisture control. Composting on the other hand takes the process further, breaking down carbon-based wood fibers into what is essentially dirt again. “Wood waste goes through a process that  includes heat and microorganisms to break down waste into a fertile soil material,” Roorda says.
Part of that end process is based on a recipe that relies on rough or fine grinding, he explains. “Some compost processors prefer larger material because they may put it into a compost pile, then screen out larger pieces to put into the next pile. This keeps the breakdown process moving along.”
Roorda hinted at new technologies both large and small to be introduced in the next 90 days, but would not elaborate. He did mention Vermeer’s new compost turner. By lifting and turning compost, air gets diffused better into the compost material, helping the breakdown process and minimizing odors. This machine also eliminates compost windrows, allowing for one stack and the ability to turn compost within the stack.
Ray Eluskie, Bandit marketing manager, says he is seeing tree care companies and municipalities getting together to act cooperatively. “We recently sold a Bandit 2680 Track Beast to the Southeastern Oakland County (Michigan) Resource Recovery Authority for several communities to develop one yard for people to bring waste, and which will then make it available to residents. Tree care guys can dump there, too.”
Regarding waste for boiler fuel, Bandit recently delivered a Beast to the Maryland Environmental Services Waste Management Company. “Markets are opening up to supply ground material for boiler fuel in the biomass industry. What was once waste is now chipped and sold for boiler fuel. We’ve converted recyclers to add a knife application for customers who would normally just grind, so they can make a chip end-product, not as much for mulch product, but a smaller chip for pellet mills. Pellet mill opportunities are also opening up,” he says. “We are seeing a growing trend toward paying for raw materials, especially among those who do this for a living.”
At Morbark, Todd Gruss, southeastern regional sales manager, says, “The markets that are hot are co-generation (energy-producing) plants opening their doors to more people, such as tree services operators and contractors, because mom and pop sawmills have had to shut down due to the housing slump. No lumber means a shortage of recyclable waste, but the plants still need a supply of fiber. That’s why we are starting to see tree guys hauling material into plants to produce electricity.”
“Another market that is coming hot and heavy is wood pellet plants,” Gruss says, agreeing with Eluskie. “Specifications are so stringent that it is hard to get premium wood pellets out of green waste from tree service brush. Plants are looking for premium chips, which can be achieved with the right grinder with a screen. Ultimately, though, it matters what you put in.”
“We are seeing activity from large- to small-scale tree care companies, right up to guys with whole tree chippers producing co-generation chips – from 75 to 300 tons a day,” Gruss says.
An interesting angle to those who purchase the large recycling equipment is that it doesn’t pay to let them stay idle and run just once in a while. That’s why, according to Gruss, idle loggers are being lured into hauling saw logs, of which there is a surplus (given the downturn in housing), to recyclers to turn into premium chips – and premium money.
“Depending on where you are in the country, you might get $17 to $27 a ton for these co-gen chips,” Gruss says. “That’s just the market in the Southeast. In the Northeast you can be looking at $30 to $35 a ton. And with pellet mills starting up, this should create greater competition for chips and better pricing, and that will create a sellers’ market.”
Right now chipper production is in high demand for machines in the 400- to 1,000-horsepower range, Gruss says. “Two of our hottest sellers are the 30/36 and 40/36 drum style, whole tree chippers.”
Tom Gross, president of Dynamic Manufacturing, says his customers are doing all of the above. “We have customers using our chippers for things such as making landscape chips, chipping forest residue for use in generating electricity, and making chips that are being processed into energy pellets,” Gross says. “We also are seeing green waste being turned into compost, and in some pilot projects for cellulosic ethanol for transportation fuel.”
“Most of our customers are in the forest products industry and are small, family run operations. The primarily use of our chippers in their operations is to gather logging residue for conversion into a fuel product. As our nation’s energy policy develops, I see the tree care industry becoming a biofuel-producing industry. However, I don’t think it will be done with brush chippers that we see today. More specialized machinery will be needed, such as our new Vector Processor, to take advantage of those opportunities as they emerge.
Steven Sylvester, CEO and president of S & S Tree & Horticultural Specialists, Inc. in South Saint Paul, Minnesota, has a slightly different take on the biofuel market.
“We use Vermeer BC2000, 1800 & 1500 chippers on our tree care production crews to grind the wood debris from each job site, then it is transferred back to our wood materials production site where we regrind it with a Rotochopper 256 grinder and colorizer,” says Sylvester. “For our larger wood that is greater than 22 inches in diameter, we use our 1000-horsepower Vermeer TG7000 tub grinder.”
“We also have several city wood-debris-site contracts for grinding and hauling of their material. We sell all of our finished product to several large Twin City landscape wholesalers (including Gertens), which is the largest buyer of our product and has been very instrumental in helping us produce new mulches to introduce to the general public. Gino Petra, one of the owners of Gertens, and myself are constantly experimenting with different forms of grinding to create new mulches and potting soils. We recycle 100 percent of our wood waste and the great thing is that sometimes it ends up back in the same yard that it came from.”
“As we (the U.S. and the world in general) look for new ways to create power, I see us turning more toward wood products. However, I caution those who see this as an easy way to make money off your wood waste that most biofuel plants do not pay premium money for our wood products,” Sylvester warns. “Up here in Minnesota, our local biofuel plant does not pay anywhere near the price per yard that the product is worth. We do not haul any of our wood waste to this plant. This is a shame but it is their policy.”
So what is the bottom line? From a business perspective, the chipper and grinder you have, or are thinking of purchasing, has taken on a new and what appears to be a long-term profit-making role. There are markets that you can make money on simply by reducing your expenses, i.e. reduced dumping. There are also opportunities for making money by producing a product for which demand it growing. Think of this as the best of times in the worst of times.
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