Narrator: About 13 million tons of used shingles
get torn off American roofs each year.
These ones are on their way to be mixed into pavement
that will be laid on US highways.
The popular roof covering can often be repurposed
but mostly ends up in landfills.
Companies that make shingles
often say they want their products recycled,
but those sustainability pledges tend to fall flat.
Dmitry: They are not making anyone accountable.
They're not going to make contractor accountable.
They're not going to make landfill accountable.
If landfill claims to do it,
they're not going to come and investigate
if they're actually doing it.
Narrator: Not to mention America
isn't even building enough roads to use up all this waste,
so the vast majority just keeps piling up.
In 2021, one of the nation's biggest roofing manufacturers
announced that it figured out how to turn used shingles
back into new ones.
But in an industry plagued by empty recycling promises,
can this new technique keep one of the world's
most popular roof types from becoming worldwide waste?
Each asphalt shingle starts out as a thin sheet of fabric.
It's coated in asphalt, which usually comes from crude oil.
Then it's topped with tiny rocks, minerals, and metals.
The technique was probably invented in the early 1900s,
but cheaper wood shingles were more popular until the 1930s.
When a push for fire safety
forced towns across America to switch to asphalt,
some shingle-makers also started adding
a fire-resistant fiber in the base sheets
that we now know to be poisonous.
TV announcer: It was natural that the scientists
would turn to asbestos, for this is a remarkable mineral.
Narrator: Millions of American workers were exposed
before the risks became widely known.
Though it's rare, some of this stuff
could still be sitting on top of older houses today,
so recyclers still have to be careful.
Obviously, we do not want to take
asbestos-containing material and grind it up
and liberate the asbestos into the atmosphere.
Narrator: Manufacturers switched to a new material
for the sheets in the 1970s.
TV announcer: Fiberglass,
a fascinating manufacturing process.
Narrator: So asphalt shingles stayed popular.
Today, industry sources say about three-fourths of US homes
are topped with them,
and the whole industry is worth about $7 billion.
They work well in lots of climates
and are often the cheapest option up front.
But the mix of ingredients
makes recycling them pretty tricky.
When asphalt and those materials sit on a roof
for many years, those materials age and degrade,
and being able to reclaim those materials
can be very, very challenging.
Narrator: So for years, the main way to recycle shingles
has been to grind them into a fine powder
that can be mixed into roads.
Hundreds of trucks full of shingles arrive here every day.
Most of them have been torn off old roofs.
A waste management company called Dem-Con
buries most of that stuff in its landfill,
but about a quarter of what they receive
is leftover scrap from shingle factories
that's cleaner and cheaper to process.
Manufacturers right now
are generating enough waste material
to meet the demands of the hot-mix asphalt market.
Narrator: An excavator dumps the shingles into a grinder.
A screen separates big pieces from small ones.
Mark: A quarter-inch and smaller
ends up in one stockpile.
Narrator: The larger pieces go through it all again.
Then, roadmakers mix this sandy, black powder
into asphalt pavement.
It takes the place of fossil fuels
and ingredients that have to be mined,
which cuts down on greenhouse gases.
When there's enough demand,
they do process used shingles, but it gets messy.
We have laborers on a conveyor belt
picking out the plastic, picking out the pop cans,
picking out the wood, tree branches,
any of the contamination.
It's very labor-intensive, very challenging.
Narrator: What's also challenging
is keeping track of who's actually recycling
which kinds of shingle waste.
So for example,
one of the world's biggest roofing companies,
called GAF, keeps a list of recycling options
on this website.
The goal was to make it easier for contractors
to recycle asphalt shingles.
We found Dem-Con listed as an option.
But Dem-Con had told us
that it only recycles a small fraction
of the used shingles arriving in those trucks every day.
When we asked GAF about it,
it said its website lists places that accept shingle waste
but acknowledged that recycling options are limited,
and the vast majority of tear-off shingles go to landfills.
After we reached out,
GAF added a clarification about Dem-Con,
and it took three other Minnesota facilities
off its list of recyclers.
The specifics can be hard to pin down,
but there are some states
where recycling used shingles into roads
seems to be working.
Next door to Minnesota, in Wisconsin,
shingles used to make up 6% of landfill waste.
Over the last two decades,
that's gone down to just a tenth of 1%.
But adding in too much ground roofing material
can make roads more brittle, and that means more potholes,
which are usually caused by extreme temperatures.
Only about half the states
allow shingle waste in their roads.
And in 2015, Colorado regulators
officially declared shingles can't be recycled at all.
That's because recycling companies
were getting paid to take the waste,
then just letting it pile up.
In Texas, a failed roofing-to-roads venture from 2018
left behind a mountain of shingles.
Piles like these can contaminate nearby air, soil, and water.
And where recycling efforts fall through,
shingles are taking up more and more space in landfills,
which are filling up in some states.
We do believe at some point,
communities are going to forbid asphalt shingles
from going into landfills.
Narrator: That would be a huge problem
for companies like GAF, which says its product
is on a quarter of all American homes.
It says better recycling techniques are a must.
Jim: We figured if we could do this, we could probably save,
quite honestly, the asphalt roofing industry.
Narrator: It took over a decade of research
to develop the company's recycling method.
GAF engineers had to make sure recycled shingles
would be as strong,
durable,
and weather-resistant as brand new ones.
And they couldn't be more expensive than the alternative.
All of the sustainability efforts
should be at cost-neutral or better.
Narrator: Engineers here say they've cracked the code.
The company opened up this demonstration plant last year.
Roof tear-off is brought into the facility
and sorted and inspected to make certain that the material
is of sufficient quality to go through our process.
Narrator: That means the shingles
can't be mixed with any other waste.
Joe: The shingles are ground into roughly
silver dollar-sized pieces.
Narrator: And magnets filter the mixture
at several stages in the process.
Joe: Nails and other metallic contaminants are removed
and then are funneled into metals recycling processes.
Narrator: The nail-free blend gets ground down even more.
Joe: To separate out the asphalt-rich
parts of the of the waste stream
from the asphalt-poor parts of the waste stream.
Narrator: These machines grind,
shake, and sift the mixture
until the rocky granules are filtered out.
Narrator: This machine presses the asphalt mixture
to make it more portable.
Joe: The asphalt briquettes are dissolved in virgin asphalt
and used to make new shingles.
Narrator: But at first,
new shingles will only contain about 7% recycled material.
Our intent is to get to 40% to 50%
recycled content in the shingles.
Narrator: To do that,
GAF has to do more research and scale up.
Our ultimate goal by 2030 is to have enough capacity
across the US to be diverting at least a million tons
of shingle waste per year from landfills into our process.
Narrator: That would still be less than a tenth
of the old shingles that get torn off
American homes each year.
I think it's a good start.
Do I think it's enough to save us in the next five years
from filling up landfills with asphalt shingles? I don't.
Narrator: But the company says that eventually
all of its shingle plants will use at least some
of the recycled briquettes and granules.
Ultimately, companies don't have
to keep their sustainability promises.
But one former industry player
wants to hold them accountable.
Dmitry Lipinskiy installed roofs for seven years
and often found he had nowhere
to take used shingles besides landfills.
Dmitriy: One of the most frustrating things
was to dump shingles on landfill,
but also seeing marketing promise
that manufacturers asking us to pass to the homeowner.
Narrator: He says exaggerated recycling claims
sway consumers toward asphalt shingles.
We're influencing buying decision
and misleading homeowner from real green options.
I think more homeowners would pick
a different roofing system if they knew the truth.
Narrator: As a contractor who made a living
installing roofing, he found it difficult
to challenge shingle producers to do better.
You know, if you're in the game,
it's very hard to go against manufacturer
or expose manufacturer,
because they might not sell you shingles.
Narrator: So he sold his business in 2021
and launched a YouTube channel about the industry.
We expose the bad, the ugly,
and highlight the best practices.
Welcome back to Roofing Insights,
a channel where you can find the truth
about roofing industry.
All of these manufacturers say the same thing.
"We are the leader." "We recycle."
"We're sustainable." "We are green."
Narrator: Most major manufacturers
say their roofs lasts for decades,
but storms can shorten that.
Dmitry says other options
might actually cost less in the long run.
You might pay double or triple for rubber shingle,
but that shingle will last 30, 40 years.
Narrator: Still, asphalt shingles rule
the North American market.
But globally, alternatives like clay, metal, wood,
and concrete roofs are often more popular
and can last longer.
Of course, every roof needs to be replaced eventually.
And GAF acknowledges that suppliers
need to take responsibility for where their product ends up.
Anything that you're making,
you should have some understanding, or at least consideration,
for what happens to those products.
I just think it's part
of good corporate hygiene and citizenship.