Contruction Business Owner, March 2010
When Louis Gherlone was in college, his dad bought a backhoe and fifteen acres of land to develop. Gherlone then began using the backhoe to pick up odd jobs around New Haven, CT, and he decided to open his own excavating business in 1985. Twenty years later, fuel prices skyrocketing and local rock quarries running dry, Louis Gherlone knew that there must be a way to use the materials his excavation company produced, instead of shipping them out and shipping in new materials.
After about a year of intensive research into systems, belts and machinery, Gherlone and his sister-in-law, Cynthia DelChiaro, opened Spring Street Recycling (SSR). They immediately implemented systems to keep the facility running as environmentally friendly as possible, including spraying the ground with a product to control the dust and running on electric power.
The facility is now open six days a week and accepts a variety of materials, including asphalt, concrete, block, brick and topsoil. The materials are then processed, stored and sold. SSR is a LEED manufacturer-100 percent of their final product is recycled.
According to SSR, from every mile of average-thickness concrete, nearly 6,000 tons of material can be reclaimed, and forty-four states currently use recycled concrete as a road base. Asphalt products are 100 percent recyclable.
SSR's website says that recycling asphalt conserves resources such as natural aggregate and petroleum products, helping save taxpayers an estimated $300 million annually and reducing demand on sources of oil, which is a non-renewable resource. In fact, recycling provides access to billions of gallons of petroleum contained in existing roads and highways, with roughly 4 million miles of pavement in the United States holding approximately 270 billion gallons of petroleum reserves.
SSR is a Women's Business Enterprise, Small Business Enterprise and member of the United States Green Building Council.
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