$16 Million Refit for C&D Recycling Centre in Toronto

02 February 2012

Houston, Texas based Waste Management (WM) is to establish a dedicated building construction and demolition (C&D) waste treatment facility in Toronto.

The company said that the facility, which it acquired late last year, is undergoing extensive upgrades at a cost of around $16 million to make it the most technologically advanced of its kind in the city.

According to WM, the semi-automated single stream recycling plant will process an estimated 87,000 tonnes of C&D material in its first full year.

The company also claimed that as the facility will be equipped to sort waste materials, contractors and developers will no longer have to separate at source, and this will result in increased recovery rates.

Located south of Queen Elizabeth Way at New Toronto Street, the facility will serve western Toronto and the southern parts of Peel Region - a site the company said that it selected because strong construction activity and population growth are anticipated.

The C&D facility will support local and provincial government efforts to divert these materials from landfill to 'mine' them for their valuable recyclable content, according to WM.

In addition to the C&D facility, which is scheduled to come online later this year, the company has launched an online tool that it said will help building planners, contractors, architects and owners measure their C&D recycling, tabulate total diversion rates and provide documentation to support LEED certification.

At every construction site, builders have an opportunity to divert a variety of C&D materials. Waste Management explained that with so many substances to manage, such as wood, rock, metal, cardboard, plastic, shingles, concrete, etc., calculating total diversion has traditionally been a time-consuming process.

The company claimed that The Diversion and Recycling Tracking tool (DART) aims to simplify this and is currently available across the U.S. and Canada.


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