If you’ve ever been part of a renovation, you know there’s lots of dust and lots of trash. Many times a home renovation involves demolition of some part of the existing structure. The guys tear it down and throw it into a large dumpster parked on site. Ever wonder where all that waste goes at the end of the project?

Thanks to places like Richard S. Burns and Company only about 10% of that stuff actually ends up in a landfill. Burns is a container service and material recovery facility that receives and processes all types of demolition and construction materials.

Burns’ 10 acre facility located in northeast Philadelphia is capable of  handling 1500 tons of waste per day. When a container arrives at the facility, it is photographed, weighed, and given and identification number. Then it’s dumped into a numbered slot and photographed again.

Workers and machines sort the contents on a magnetic conveyor belt. Metal, gypsum, stone and plastic materials are removed and recycled. Wood is chipped into mulch or sold to landfills as a proprietary barrier system. The process is amazingly efficient and the site surprisingly clean. An automated sprinkler system that keeps dust and particles from floating around is so effective that workers are not required to wear dust masks.

The Richard S Burns Company is Philadelphia’s only fully permitted and LEED staffed materials and waste recycling facility.