News & Press

Adam Quenneville in the News

Go Green in 2008!

by Bob Houchin

Every New Year, people across the world make resolutions. They promise to improve themselves in some way or form. They commit to making changes in their personal or work life. With the dawning of 2008, contractors in every field should consider making a resolution—to be more environmentally friendly. Consider how much material you waste in a year in extra parts, scrap metal, and even office paper. Rather than throwing it in a trash can, could you do something else?

Adam Quenneville of Adam Quenneville Roofing and Siding in Springfield , Massachusetts , wondered if he could make a difference by recycling. He calculated how much waste his company produced each year, and he questioned if there was something different he could do with it. After doing his research, Adam discovered how he could recycle almost 100 percent of every roof tear-off. Last year was his first full year of recycling his tear-offs, and Adam ended up saving over three million pounds of materials from ending up in a landfill. Now, he's developing a marketing plan to promote his company as a green-oriented company.

So, how did Adam find a recycling center that would take his roof tearoffs? How exactly is a roof recycled anyway? And how does Adam plan on marketing his company as the green roofer? You'll find out in this month's Learning from the Best.

You do something unique by recycling everything from your roof tear-offs. Is that correct?

Yeah, there's a ton of stories like mine. Last year, I was looking at how much money I was spending on dumping. I realized that I could probably buy a truck, hire a person, and have enough work to keep him busy. I'd actually be saving a little money. Then, I started looking into what to do with these shingles. We were moving literally 30-tons of shingles a week. Your average home has about 10,000 pounds of roofing come off when you do a tear off job.

So, I found a company in Connecticut that recycles shingles. With my own truck, I figured I could take this trash anywhere I wanted now. With all this talk on the environment, I thought with all the waste we produce, we could make a difference. This company was about 30 miles away, and they charge for it, but you take it to them. They'll recycle it for you. Last year, I recycled three million pounds of roofing.

By going through the extra effort of recycling material, other than benefiting the environment, how has it benefited your company?

We get the benefit of saying that we're a green company. Nobody else is doing it in the area. I'm literally building an entire marketing campaign around recycling and being green. I've done television commercials for seven years, and I've never put my face on TV. This year, I'm going to come out of my shell. I'm going to go on TV and explain to people how we're unique in that we recycle every bit of the roof in a tear-off.

I also have a logo that I'm promoting. It's called Go Green Roof. I bought gogreenroof.com and go greenroof.net. They'll all take you right to my website. It talks about what we do, and it talks about green roofs, which are vegetative roofs that commercial companies can have installed.

There was a big article in our Springfield Republican, which is our big paper up here. It said that Springfield , Massachusetts , was named the third greenest city in the entire country. So, we're right in the mix. People are aware of the environment. That's going to really benefit us when we start marketing it.

How does the actual roof recycling process work?

Every part of the roof is recycled. Our guys take the metal off and pile it up. They put the wrappers in a bag. What goes into the dumpster is the meat of the roof; it's the shingles, the tar paper, and the nails. The machine at the recycle center grinds all this material together. They then take this giant magnet that pulls all the nails out of it. So, all that is left is the shingle and tar paper grinded up into dime-sized pieces. That material is put under asphalt roads as a base. It's used in filling pipe lines or sewer lines. This material is saving something else from being produced. And that saves energy.

What kind of additional cost do you take on by recycling?

To be honest, it's not the most cost-effective. It costs a little bit more doing it this way. But I feel better about it, and I'm making a difference. And homeowners feel better about it when we tell them about it. Besides, all of our containers and dumpsters are all painted black and they're lettered up. So, they're moving billboards. As the truck goes to the recycling center, people see our name all over town. That made the little extra money okay to me. We get a lot of exposure from it.

Where can other RSI members find out how to do this?

Well, I just got on-line and found the recycling centers. I'm sure they're everywhere. But I have to say this. This probably isn't for the small contractor. You have to be doing enough business to buy your own truck and containers. For me, it was a perfect fit. We just had enough business to rationalize it. But there are plenty of companies in RSI that could do it, and it leads to some great exposure. SGI