The Health & Safety Executive rebrands vibration website to provide more information.
Earthmoving News reports that the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) has rebranded its vibration website with a new design and featuring advice and guidance on the risks of vibration.
The website, which can be accessed here, features information associated with hand arm and whole-body vibration (WBV).
The new-look website features links to expert information, details of regulations associated with vibration, and advice on how to prevent whole body vibration.
National Demolition Association says US regulation is needed to encourage recycling.
Mike TaylorMichael Taylor, executive director of the National Demolition Association in Doylestown, Pennsylvania, outside Philadelphia, said there are about 14 different materials from a demolished structure that could be recycled. The association represents more than 900 demolition companies across North America.
Taylor said the marketability of C&D material is highly dependent upon location, other competitive materials, and demand. Therefore, there are currently only three materials that are regularly recycled.
Most of the metal from a demolished structure currently goes to the scrap metal industry. “That’s pretty much all of the metal from the smallest venetian blind up to the biggest I-beam,” Taylor said. “We’re the largest source of feedstock for scrap metal.”
The other two marketable C&D components are wood and concrete. Taylor said both are very region sensitive. “If you have an area where there are wood burning power plants that’s another potential market for your product,” Taylor said. “The same is true for concrete. In areas of high-aggregate demand, like Los Angeles or San Francisco, the demand for concrete coming out of demolished structures is incredibly high.”
In big stone states, like Pennsylvania or Kansas, concrete is often less competitive in price than virgin material. “With this material, if you have to transport it, with the price of fuel, more than 20 to 25 miles it tends to lose its value pretty quickly,” Taylor said.
Another element impacting the viability of C&D recycling is landfill costs, Taylor said. If the debris is removed from New York, for example, it might cost over $125 a ton to dispose of the material. But Taylor said there are places in central Michigan where it only costs $8 a ton. “That is one of the pressures that exist that has an impact in certain regions of the country on whether material is successfully recycled or not,” Taylor said.
Taylor said some states have established regulations to promote C&D recycling, while others have implemented rules that hinder the industry. He cited California where most of the counties are required to get to a 50 percent recycling rate. But it is often expensive to get a permit for a recycling facility. “That inhibits the possibility of a lot of people entering the market when they look at the overall profit margin,” Taylor said.
Another problem is in Texas. Taylor said the state ruled that recyclers could not operate a C&D facility within a mile of another occupied building. “That’s not a problem if you are demolishing a silo way out in west Texas,” Taylor said. “But unfortunately most of our work is in Houston, Dallas, San Antonio and Austin. If you want to process the material onsite we’re going to be feet from another building, not a mile.”
Taylor said that to successfully implement a viable C&D recycling system across the country the federal government, through the Environmental Protection Agency, should develop a national C&D recycling policy. He said this would make the process more economically attractive and help develop markets for the recycled commodities.
Taylor cited a mandate by President Bill Clinton in the 1990s that required the federal government to buy recycled paper. The government is one of the largest buyers of paper in the world. “Recycling plants sprung up all over the country,” Taylor said.
Taylor said the federal government should recommend that the state department of transportations and state facility managers allow recycled material to be used. “If the federal government could promote recycling then a decent portion of the material would be used in projects and not sent to a landfill. Recycling would grow,” Taylor said.
Utterly beautiful new video showing a wrecking ball in action in Baltimore.
This is absolutely stunning. Great footage, majestic soundtrack, and a wrecking ball used with accuracy and care. This could become a Demolition News classic!
Let us know what you think or suggest your alternatives for video of the year in the Comments area below.
More photos have just become available of the new Rusch Triple 34-25 in Norway.
We would never suggest that you, our loyal readers, are predictable. But there are two things guaranteed to be popular here on Demolition News: video of demolition gone bad; and video and photos of big machines.
Thankfully, unless our news sources have betrayed us, there’s currently no new footage of demolition gone awry so instead here’s some more details on the Rusch Triple 34-25 that is currently undergoing assembly and testing in Norway before it starts work eating decommissioned oil rigs for breakfast. This is quite a unique opportunity to see this extraordinary piece of machinery in use. Not even all the money from your savings accounts could afford one of these, so it is nice to be able to see one being used. You can think about what you’d like to see get demolished by it.
In addition, Rusch’ Ruud Schreijer has very kindly provided us with a diagram showing the working range of the latest beast to roll out of his company’s gates.
Genesis' Dan Jacobson checks over the modified attachmentGetting ready to eat oil rigs
New photo showing the 34-25 high reach excavator from Dutch modifier Rusch.
When your best-known machine has a working height of 90 metres, anything else is going to look pretty small by comparison. But don’t be fooled. The machine in the photo (left) might only reach a lowly 34 metres, but it can wield a 25 tonne too at that height (and no, there isn’t a decimal point missing there. It really DOES say 25 tonnes!)
The compact crusher bandwagon rolls on with two new Italian contenders.
Picture the scene. You are the marketing manager of an Italian equipment manufacturer that is just a few months away from launching a pair of new but as yet unnamed compact crushers. It is your job to think of an appropriate name that will convey power, durability, productivity, environmental benefits and green credentials.
Tough, isn’t it?
Which is probably why Guidetti chose instead to emphasise the “Italianness” of its new offering in the increasingly crowded track-mounted compact crusher market by calling them the Caesar 1 and Caesar 2. (Sorry, but since my name is Mark Anthony, I do feel honour-bound to give them just a slight stabbing).
Full specification details are available on the Guidetti website, but we can tell you that the Caesar 1 weighs in at 3.2 tonnes and offers a crusher throughput of 20 tonnes/hour while the larger 6.7 tonne Caesar 2 is said to produce 50 tonnes/hour.
The new GDR-200 is the latest attachment to join the swelling Genesis product range.
Genesis has unveiled the GDR-200, a new processing attachment designed for excavators in the 20 tonne operating weight class.
The GDR-200 delivers 104 tonnes of crushing force at the tip, an 813 mm jaw depth, a jaw opening of 890 mm, and a quick seven second cycle time. Genesis says this is the largest jaw they’ve ever offered on a tool for a 20-tonne class machine.
We are searching for the greatest name for a demolition company, real or imagined.
Trawling through the vast, unmapped hinterlands of the Internet, we recently came across a New Orleans-based demolition company that goes by the marvelous name of Nutter Buster Demolition (apparently, the company is family-owned and the founder’s surname is Nutter).
We doubt that this can be beaten but we’d love to hear if you think you know, have heard of (or have just created) a better name for a demolition company.
Indignant rant about a magazine’s apparent inability to describe a machine properly.
About 25 years ago, I was told by a senior officer from within the Kent police force that one of the biggest challenges facing them when trying to recover stolen equipment was the fact that they couldn’t identify machine types. The term JCB can cover a multitude of equipment types, very few of them actually rolling off a Uttoxeter production line; and a digger can be anything from a half tonne machine you can tow behind you family car to a mining shovel that could accommodate said car in its bucket.
This is not the kind of thing the police have to deal with every day so, even a quarter of a century on, I am still happy to make allowances on this basis. But what excuse can there possibly be when one of the UK’s leading construction magazines perpetuates this ignorance?
In this article, which ironically is on the subject of plant theft, we have references to:
A Volvo dumper truck (surely an articulated dumptruck)
A JCB 3CX excavator (er, that’s a backhoe loader)
And a JCB digger (that could be just about anything)
There would be outcry if, instead of using the proper name and nomenclature, Jeremy Clarkson described Ferrari’s latest offering a “a red car”. And how would you get on if you popped into your local mobile phone shop and asked for “a Nokia”.
Surely we should expect a little more accuracy and attention detail from a supposed industry magazine.
Visitors to the Demolition News website just hit a record high…
When we first unveiled Demolition News approximately one year ago, we regularly monitored our traffic statistics on Google Analytics; and it often made for pretty depressing reading. Indeed, in our first month in operation, there were six days in which no-one at all visited the site.
How things have changed.
Thanks in part to an influx of new subscribers from the US, possibly attracted by our “why don’t Americans GET high reach demolition” story (our most widely read and commented on this month), the number of visits yesterday hit an all time daily high and have contributed to making August our most successful month to date.
But while we’re delighted to have established a readership “across the pond”, one of the most telling statistics is that more than 10% of all our readers have returned to the site more than 200 times.
Equally pleasing is that the second most visited area of the website, attracting just over a third of ALL visitors,, is our new Business Directory. This has been achieved with just 13 listings, the majority from long-time Demolition News supporters. Just imagine what that could look like if this became a definitive listing of all demolition-related products and services!
So we would just like to take this opportunity to thank all our subscribers, new and regular readers, and of course our sponsors, without whom we simply wouldn’t be here.
Earthmoving News reports that the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) has rebranded its vibration website with a new design and featuring advice and guidance on the risks of vibration. 
Genesis has unveiled the GDR-200, a new processing attachment designed for excavators in the 20 tonne operating weight class.