As one of the largest and most reliable providers of waste disposal services in the region, a client in the North Carolina area contracted with us at U.S. Waste Industries to dispose of a massive 200 ton brick of road salt.
Since inclement weather in freezing temperatures is unpredictable in this climate, the client had amassed somewhat of an oversupply of rock salt one year. With all of their indoor storage facilities at capacity, they were forced to store it in an outdoor location. When calculating their rock salt inventory prior to the start of the following winter, they noticed that exposure to the elements, from rain and wind to the heat of the sun, turned the large pile of salt from a normally free-flowing material into one solid brick, rendering it unusable. They started the process of getting it removed and replaced by contacting us.
Our years of experience with recycling, reuse, and reclamation projects enabled us to approach this issue from a new perspective. The road salt had value as a commodity, and not one that should go to waste by disposing of it at a landfill, so we proposed an alternative solution. Here at U.S. Waste, we have an enormous amount of heavy equipment, including a grinding attachment to a skidsteer loader. In the past, we had used this grinder to break down and crush all kinds of material to a smaller size to make it more compact and manageable. Logic followed that we could use it to crush the blocks of salt and return it to its original state.
The process turned out to be very effective. By simply adding the grinding attachment to our loader and then feeding in the solid masses of rock salt, we were able to reduce the particle size and return the bulk solid material into a freely flowing state. We worked for two days straight to transform an unyielding and unusable rock into a large hopper of coarsely grained road salt ready to use at the first sign of an impending storm.
Our novel approach saved the client considerable expense while keeping perfectly usable raw materials out of the landfill.
To learn more about this project or any of our waste management capabilities, contact us today.