By: Diana Johnsen
djohnsen@kcautv.com
To the Plymouth County Landfill, the old shingles on your house are considered as good as gold.
That's because they take shingles and grind them up to be used in asphalt on county roads here in Siouxland.
Before getting ground up, the landfill tests the shingles for asbestos and makes sure it knows where they come from.
"We have to have the name, address, of each place of where it came from, and if it's a business it has to be tested before it gets here," said the landfill's manager, Mark Kunkel.
After being tested, the shingles are fed into a sorting machine that pulls out all the staples, nails, and other metals pieces.
The shingles then go into a grinder that breaks them down into a fine grit.
Then, they are shipped off to asphalt paving companies.
The landfill says the process helps keep shingles that are hard to decompose out of the ground and prolong the life of the landfill for future use.
"Instead of building new landfills, we're trying to preserve this one and get as much life as we can out of it," added Kunkel.
The landfill received a $20,000 dollar forgivable loan from the Iowa Department of Natural Resources to help pay for the equipment they use to grind the asphalt.
On an average day it will grind about 50 tons of shingle grit.
