Roughly 13 million tons of shingles waste is generated each year, with about 90 percent of it landfilled and taking about 300 years to decompose.

Much of the small percentage that is recycled is incorporated into pavement. But roofing manufacturer GAF, who cranks out a large share of these shingles at its 35 manufacturing plants across North America, plans to recover more of this product at the end of its life, and for a higher use than paving materials.

“What we recognized in the shingle manufacturing sector is a lack of circularity in that asphalt shingles are not being reclaimed to make back into new shingles, and we want to change that,” says Jeff Terry, vice president of Corporate Social Responsibility and Sustainability for GAF. Through its patented technology, GAF has begun turning roof shingles back into more roof shingles, not only to secure more feedstock, but also to try and address an environmental problem specific to this industry. Terry gives a little context:

“Asphalt is a waste byproduct from petroleum refining, and when it’s landfilled it just goes back into the ground and takes up space there. It’s essentially putting oil back into the ground from which oil came. That’s the circularity we are not interested in,” he says.

Leveraging its technology, GAF recovers 90 percent of asphalt shingle material that gets torn off of its roofs, to be incorporated into new shingles, with up to 7 percent recycled content.

The ultimate goal is to be able to ensure any post-consumer asphalt shingle, whether GAF’s own products or that of other manufacturers, can be incorporated into the process.

The first step is taking the waste shingles and separating granules and contaminants that would disrupt the manufacturing process.

Granules are then refined and processed into what ultimately becomes a powder. And through a compression process that powder is turned into a formed asphalt briquette.

Transporting as briquettes (rather than in powder form) from waste processing locations to manufacturing facilities avoids a technical glitch.

“If we just shipped powder in one large sack, because of asphalt’s properties that powder would start to congeal together, and we would have one large brick,” Terry says.

Once the formed briquettes get to manufacturing locations they are processed as a liquid, which is incorporated with other materials to make a homogenous blend.

“From there we make the recycled shingle,” Terry says.

A pilot plant in Lockport, NY has processed 825,000 pounds since April 2021 that have gone into the manufacture of new shingles at GAF’s Tampa, FL facility.

The company is in the process of developing its first commercial-scale plant in Corsicana, TX, projected to launch by the end of 2023. It should have capacity to process 300,000 tons of shingle waste a year, supplying enough recycled asphalt to go into more than 660,000 homes, Terry says.

A third-party certifier of building materials, UL, has conducted durability testing, and it’s been confirmed that the recycled content is of the same quality and strength as the virgin material that goes into GAF’s roofs, which Terry says are made to last about 30 years.

GreenCircle, an independent third-party certification body that vets operations’ sustainability claims, also conducts certifications for GAF, including waste diversion and recycled content for the manufacturer’s products.

GreenCircle is still in the process of auditing and certifying GAF’s closed loop process. But Tad Radzinski, certification officer, GreenCircle Certified, confirms thus far, “This innovative process will not only reduce disposal of valuable materials in a landfill but will also reduce the carbon footprint of new shingles. It will help reduce the environmental life cycle impacts of extracting and processing the raw materials into new shingles, which in turn reduces the carbon footprint of the shingle product.”

R&D was a long and complicated process.

“The chemistry and technical know-how involved is complex. And to build processing capabilities to efficiently manage waste and introduce it back into the manufacturing process is an expensive endeavor,” Terry says.

GAF has committed $100M to refine and operationalize the technology in order to scale.

“It’s a significant investment, but we recognize it’s an important part of how we need to operate into the future to avoid shingles going to landfill and to refine new raw materials for our manufacturing process,” he says.

The manufacturer and recycler has targeted a few types of partners along the supply chain, beginning with a nationwide network of GAF certified contractors that tear off old roofs and install new ones. They will be key to helping determine how to efficiently move the material to transfer stations, and or processing centers where it’s turned into briquettes.

The plan is to also work with large waste management companies.

“Landfills have tremendous volumes of postconsumer waste shingles. So, working directly with them to recover material to incorporate into our process is important. But our [ultimate] goal is to be able to work with the contractors and eliminate landfills altogether,” Terry says.

On the final receiving end have been nonprofit community partners, largely in the Gulf region. GAF donates product incorporating its recycled asphalt shingles to reroof homes damaged by storms.  

“As part of this social impact initiative, GAF Community Matters, we are committed to repairing or replacing 500 roofs for families struggling to find a sense of resiliency who are hit year after year from one storm to the next,” Terry says.

Looking forward, an ultimate company ambition is to incorporate recycled asphalt content across all GAF shingle products and divert at least 1 million tons of asphalt shingles annually from landfills by 2030.

“But to make significant reductions in the amount of postconsumer material going to landfill, we need the whole industry to step into this process,” Terry says.

“Our main focus is turning waste shingles back into shingles to drive for circularity within the asphalt shingle market. And everyone in our sector needs to focus on building that circularity.”