The Zanker Road Landfill is a model recycling facility that has been recognized nationally. Zanker currently leads the industry in construction and demolition (C&D) debris recycling, wood waste recycling, and green waste composting. Through its aggressive recycling efforts, Zanker achieves over a 90% recycling rate. Zanker currently recycles concrete rubble, wood waste, yard waste, clean and mixed demolition debris, cardboard, gypsum, metal and bulky items.

Zanker Road Resource Management Ltd. In 1990, ZRRML began the extensive permitting process for the Zanker Material Processing Facility, ZMPF, formally known as the Owens Coming Fiberglass Landfill. The ZMPF was fully permitted in December 1998, and officially began operations in June 1999.

The ZMPF is divided into several different processing areas, each capable of processing different types of waste streams. These areas include: Demolition Recycling Area, Mixed Debris Recycling Area and the Wood Waste Recycling Area. Although the Wood Recycling Area accepts source separated materials, the operation is still described below:

Demolition Recycling Area

The ZMPF has a complete Demolition Recycling Facility that can accept and process unsorted demolition debris materials at the rate of 135 tons per hour. This facility consists of a patented combination of conveyors, screens, magnets and water separation. Loads of demolition wastes enter the facility and are weighed and recorded. The scale operator also obtains information pertaining to the origin of the waste. After leaving the scale the hauler deposits its load in the demolition recycling tipping area.

At the tipping area a Caterpillar excavator initially removes large waste items (mattress, couches, large metal pieces, etc) and places them in bunkers. The excavator then loads the remaining materials on a feed conveyor that transports the materials pass a ferrous metal magnet and into a 12' x 62' trommel screen.

The trommel screen removes the 2 1/2" minus (fines) and the 8" minus materials. The 2 1/2" minus soil drops onto a conveyor where it is routed into the Residual Screening System. The Residual Screening System has a 3/4" vibrating screen that removes the soil. These fines are conveyed into a stockpile and eventually used as landfill cover or on construction projects. The remaining materials are routed through the General Kinematics De-stoner which lifts and separates lighter materials (wood) from the heavy materials concrete, rock and asphalt. The lighter materials are conveyed to another conveyor from further processing.

The heavies from the screening system and the 8" minus from the Trommel screen are then conveyed to a stockpile and recircled back through the system at a later date. We fondly refer to as the C&D Rocket (because of it's rocket shaped exterior). The C&D Rocket uses up to 2,500 gallons of water per minute and rotates at a slow rate of approximately four revolutions per minute to ensure that all materials come in direct contact with the water. Floatables (primarily wood) are forced out of the C&D Rocket by the steady water flow. The floatables are then conveyed to main sorting conveyor where (contaminates, primary plastics) are hand sorted out of the primary wood waste. The water from the C&D Rocket is captured, filtered and then re-used in the system. The sinkables, (metal, concrete, brick, etc) drop to the bottom of the C&D Rocket and are conveyed by the slow spinning of the C&D Rocket onto a conveyed where metals, ferrous and non ferrous, and larger pieced of concrete and brick are removed. The smaller brick, stones and concrete are allowed to drop off the end of the conveyor into a stockpile. These materials are transferred to the Zanker Road Landfill for further processing in to road base.

All materials larger than 8" fall directly from the trommel screen to the main sorting line along with the floatables from the C&D Rocket and the wood from the processing system. These materials are conveyed underneath an overhead belt magnet that separates the metal and deposits it into an adjacent bunker. Concrete is manually removed from the sorting conveyor and placed into bunkers. The only materials remaining on the conveyor are the cleaned wood waste. The wood waste is conveyed to a stacking conveyor where it is stockpiled and allowed to dry. Wood waste is processed and recycled into soil amendments, mulch and co-generation fuel.

Mixed Debris Recycling Area
ZMPF also receive mixed debris boxes and self-hauled materials. Mixed Debris materials are offloaded in the mixed debris recycling area and sorters remove recyclable materials by hand. Recovered commodities include, wood waste, concrete, dirt, gypsum wall board, cardboard and metals. Each separated commodity is sent to another recycling operation on site as necessary or shipped to market. Finished products produced from the Mixed Debris Recycling Area include, soil, metals, and precious metals, wood for the wood grinding operation, concrete, bricks, asphalt, ceramics for the concrete operation, cardboard, gypsum wall board for the Gypsum Operation, wood and asphalt shingles and ADC.

Wood Waste Recycling

ZMPF's wood waste recycling plant processes clean wood loads hauled by residents and businesses, or separated from Mixed Debris Recycling Area or materials separated from the Demolition Recycling Area. Using a Caterpillar excavator, wood is loaded into a Peterson Pacific Grinder, which grinds the wood. The ground wood is then screened to separate the materials into wood chips and fines, which are similar to saw dust. The wood chips are accumulated and sent to market as fuel for electric generation facilities or as a landscape mulch product. The fines are sold as soil amendments to materials yard, landscapers, contractors and homeowners.