Joe Dennes, Vice President, Residential R&D, GAF
More than 75 percent of households in the United States are covered by asphalt shingle roofs. At the end of a roof’s lifespan, these shingles are increasingly ending up in landfills as other recycling options, such as repurposing old shingles into pavement for roads, have been on a steady decline. Each year, 13 million tons of asphalt roofing shingles end up in landfills. Only about 10 percent of that waste gets recycled for use in paving and other projects.
States and cities across the country are turning shingles away from landfill but what can contractors do when roofs need to be replaced?
GAF, a Standard Industries company and the largest roofing and waterproofing manufacturer in North America, has pioneered a solution. Following more than a decade of research and development, the company has introduced a newly patented process that allows about 90 percent of waste shingle material that it collects to be reclaimed and reused in the manufacture of new shingles. Through this process, GAF has successfully manufactured new shingles containing recycled material which have been UL-certified for their safety and effectiveness. The shingles show performance that is identical to standard GAF shingles in every aspect.
GAF’s innovation represents the industry’s first major step towards a circular economy for asphalt shingles by successfully converting post-consumer shingle waste and turning it into new, usable material for roofing and beyond. GAF’s newly-patented process successfully balances cost and quality.
This was one of several challenges the team faced throughout the research and development effort. The process of converting asphalt shingles into a usable recycled material stream can be costly and the diversity of materials in a shingle beyond asphalt (e.g., rock granules) only adds to the challenge and complexity of creating a usable recycled raw material. Through this invention, GAF has developed an affordable way of recycling the shingles, while effectively refining the balance of raw materials whereby 90 percent of the shingle waste material collected by GAF can be reused.
An important challenge for the team was how to remove granules from the post-consumer waste shingles without damaging the machines used during the process. The rock granules can be very tough on machinery: if the equipment fails, it can be incredibly expensive to fix and that process is not sustainable. This patented grinding process allows GAF to transform the waste material it recovers into a usable recycled asphalt “briquette.” Just as the team achieved creating a new recycled asphalt material, they now had to achieve another balance: how to transport the material easily and efficiently from one plant to another for incorporation into the manufacturing process.
These briquettes and the breakthrough technology to manufacture them reduces the amount of virgin raw materials required to make new shingles without compromising product quality or performance, creating an opportunity to reduce the nearly 13 million tons of shingle waste that is produced each year.
This is not a special green product that the company is introducing but rather an approach to creating product circularity. GAF has committed to diverting one million tons of asphalt shingles from landfills each year and incorporating recycled asphalt content into all of its shingle products by 2030. The ultimate goal is to bypass the landfill entirely through a “direct takeback” system, where shingles at the end of their life cycle can be pulled directly from homeowners’ roofs and returned to the manufacturing process of new products.
Following the launch of a pilot program in 2021, GAF donated the first roof made with shingles containing recycled asphalt to a deserving family in Tampa. This install marks the first of many as GAF has committed to donating enough shingles containing recycled asphalt to reroof 500 homes this year with its non-profit partners, such as Habitat for Humanity, Team Rubicon, Rebuilding Together and St. Bernard Parish, among others.
Watertight Roofing in Tampa was the first contractor to install GAF shingles made with recycled material and said the shingles were equal in quality and style to traditional GAF shingles.
We are currently scaling the process and looking to increase the volume of waste shingles we can divert from landfills. This effort will require deep collaboration throughout the supply chain. Partnerships with large waste haulers, roofing contractors and reverse logistics providers will be key to the success of this program and to achieving our goal of network-wide circularity for asphalt shingle production.
Joe Dennes, Vice President, Residential R&D for GAF, completed his B.S. in Chemistry from Millersville University in 2004 and his Ph.D. in Materials Chemistry from Princeton University in 2008. He joined DuPont Central Research & Development after graduation as a Research Chemist. In 2012, Joe became R&D Manager of the Photovoltaics research group at DuPont. In 2015, he became a New Business Development Manager for the sales organization of the Tyvek
business unit. In 2016, Joe was Technology Director for the Tyvek Medical Packaging and Graphics business, overseeing R&D, Technical Service and Applications Development for the business. In 2017, Joe became Global Market Manager for the DuPont Aerospace business and in 2019, Joe was Global Head of Marketing for DuPont’s Safety platform. Joe joined GAF in August of 2021 as Vice President, Residential R&D overseeing new product development, raw materials R&D and process R&D.
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