Asphalt Shingle Recycling Line – IKO Recycling Initiatives

Leading manufacturer also pilots commercial recycling effort in U.S. plant.

In celebration of Earth Day, IKO, a world leader in the manufacture of residential and commercial roofing products, is pleased to announce the full commissioning of its Asphalt Shingle Recycling line in Hawkesbury, Ontario. The company also recently began the pilot phase of a TPO recycling line in its Hagerstown, Maryland plant that opened in 2022.

The Hawkesbury location, one of IKO’s eight modern shingle manufacturing plants, is among the first shingle plants in the world to graduate from its pilot phase into daily production. Planning for the two-story 28,000 sq. ft. Recycled Asphalt Shingles (RAS) facility began in late 2019.  After several pandemic related delays, the project broke ground in 2021 and was constructed in phases until completion in fall of 2022.  It became fully operational during the winter of 2022-2023.

Dan Horton, founding partner of ASR Systems, a leading pioneer in the development of shingle recycling systems and IKO’s partner in this initiative, noted that “IKO is among the first asphalt shingle manufacturers in North America to achieve true circularity at one of its shingle plant locations with an in-line waste recycling process. It is also the first manufacturer, to my knowledge, that has developed a commercialized shingle recycling center that re-uses the recycled raw material output in the production of new shingles.”

In the current environment, a typical shingle recycling plant produces about 5,000 tons of recycled content per year, which is a miniscule percentage of the raw materials used annually by an average production facility. With IKO’s new line running daily, the company is exceeding those benchmarks by a wide margin. When it reaches its capacity later this year, the IKO RAS will be able to recycle up to 150 tons of shingle material per day.

According to the US EPA 2020, approximately 15 million tons of asphalt shingles are discarded annually, and 13 million tons were landfilled, and 2 million tons were recovered for further use as recently as 2018.

Edgard Leite, plant manager, for the IKO Hagerstown TPO facility, is excited about the future potential for recycling efforts at his plant, which employs technology that will allow his team to recover and reuse all of the plant’s post-industrial raw material waste, including the polyester scrim, an industry first.  “We’re just getting started, but already we’re learning how to gain greater efficiencies from the process.  We are eager to realize our goal of re-utilizing all our raw material waste,” Leite said.

“The first significant step towards reducing shingle related disposal in landfills is our goal to achieve zero percent waste at every plant location. We are well on our way to achieve this objective at our Hawkesbury facility, and we will use what we learned from this effort to rapidly innovate even more efficient lines at both IKO Hagerstown and at each of our shingle plants in the coming years,” said David Koschitzky, IKO CEO.

The announcements follow the IKO’s EU Conference in Lille, France, where each of its European businesses shared their progress towards intermediate and long-term sustainability and circularity plans.  The meeting was an important milestone amid continuing momentum behind the European Green Deal, Europe’s pledge to achieving climate neutrality by 2050.

About IKO

IKO is a world-wide leader in the roofing, waterproofing and insulation industry for residential and commercial markets.  A vertically integrated company, IKO operates more than 35 manufacturing plants throughout North America and Europe.  IKO is a family owned business established in 1951.