Page 8 - Demo

8|November 2019
Recycle, Reuse and Repurpose Your Scrap
Slippery rock Gazette
One question every stone fabrication shop in the nation will have to even-
tually confront: what to do with all their accumulated, unusable scrap stone? A busy stone shop can produce up to 8,000 pounds of scrap granite every business day. That’s equivalent to two full loads of Braxton-Bragg’s Hercules DS Self-Dumping Steel Hopper.
A well-known tactic that I have noticed shops around my area using to get rid of scrap is putting all of it on a pallet by the road, in hopes that people will take it off their hands for home projects such as stepping stones, garden bed decorations, or crafts. And from what I hear, the scrap goes quickly.
But if a shop is not located by a convenient, busy roadway, such as a highway, and an abundance of land is available, a shop can keep dumping their scrap in a field, eventually creating a moun- tain of scrap over time. Although a mountain of stone is a haven for D.I.Y., and serves its purpose
Codiak Herrell
Photos by Holly Herrell and Courtesy Recycled Granite
when you need a color sample, eventually someone (like the shop owner) will need to confront that mountain.
On the plus side, a company can benefit from its accumulated scrap by reusing all the scrap stone on their parking lot, when it is time to expand, by setting a layer of scrap stone down and covering it with crushed rock. Or, one can make the scrap into gravel and reuse or resell it, al- though considering the price tag of a gravel-making machine, that’s not as attractive a solution. One company mentioned how they donated their scrap to their community after a natural disas- ter, for filling sinkholes.
To reap some profitable rewards for your unusable scrap, Braxton- Bragg offers a machine called the Tomahawk Stone Splitter, which is designed to break scrap into uniform length tiles. This
The Tomahawk Stone Splitter is capable of producing evenly- sized rectangular granite pavers and curved firepit blocks.
versatile tool is easy to use, mod- erately priced and a necessity to any small shop with scrap over- flow. Altogether, over 100 shapes and sizes can be produced from the Tomahawk in comparison to a stone tumbler or vibrator. But more importantly, this machine promotes the recycling granite and build green movement for smaller shops.
A major contributor to the re- cycling granite movement is none other than the company Recycled Granite, whom you may have heard of before due to their work on 14 HGTV and DIY TV shows, and numerous public proj- ects across the country. To date, Recycled Granite has saved over 80,000,000 pounds of granite remnants from being dumped into landfills, by repurposing. Their mission, as told by Julie Rizzo, CEO and founder of Recycled Granite, is to “create jobs, re- duce waste, and make the world
a better place.” Recycled Granite understands that one fabricator does not have enough machines and time to recycle all their own waste. Working with Recycled Granite will not only leave you feeling green, but also give you a Green Certification to add to your portfolio, showing customers that you are conscious of the environ- ment. With 20 locations across
The parking lot ploy – free granite scraps for the taking. Not surprisingly, this works.
the United States, it’s easy to set up involvement with Recycled Granite. Simply contact the near- est Recycled Granite location and work out an arrangement that is best for your shop.
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