Recycling on steroids. Steve Halgren shouts over the din of the front-loader, backhoe, conveyor belts and wood grinder inside a hangar-like building on the eastern border of Minneapolis.

“They’re dropping the recyclable commodities down, as you see. We’ve got cardboard, metal, this is ground-up-wood … and at the very end is the concrete,” says Halgren, listing the four major materials recycled at the facility.

The audience for Halgren, president of the waste management group at Veit Specialty Contracting and Waste Management, is a small group of young contractors on a tour of the Veit facility set up by the Associated General Contractors of Minnesota (AGC of MN).

They watch as the materials are dropped into open stalls from the long “pick/sort line” suspended above the facility floor like a triple-long construction trailer at the Como Recycling Transfer Facility at 1025 33rd Ave. S.E.

Veit has been recycling material at the facility since 1996. Since installing the pick/sort line in 2008, Veit has greatly increased the percentage of recyclable commodities that leave the building. In 2010, the facility recycled just over 70 percent of the construction debris it took in, said Russ Reger, Veit’s vice president of roll-off operations. The company is on track to match or exceed that percentage in 2011. . . "

From http://finance-commerce.com/2011/10/finance-commerce’s-week-in-review-oct-22-28/