Our Story

Hello, I am Brook Edwards, one member of a two member company. My wife Suzy Edwards is the owner of RecycleGuy. We have just completed our third year in business and broken through the 6 figure gross sales plateau, that is great since we started from nothing.

Together we have developed a new dumpster that services the re-roofing industry. We have designed, prototyped and built a 4-door dumpster and used it for a season on a sparingly basis while we were applying for a patent. There is nothing like this dumpster, it combines two industries who have never worked together the shingle material distributor and the waste industry and it allows us to save the shingles from the landfill recycling them into asphalt road pavement. The dumpster is designed to deliver the new skidded shingles from the supplier in the front of the container eliminating the need for double trucks going to the same jobsite. Our dumpster or our competitors was already going empty to the site to haul away the old shingles that the contractor would tear off and now by putting in extra doors and a solid moveable wall we can do both jobs with one truck. The dumpster is designed for the contractor workers to do the sorting of the shingles on the jobsite and placing the non-shingle material in a waste compartment built into the dumpster.

Asphalt shingles contain 22 to 35% reusable oil that when ground is the same oil that is used to make black asphalt pavement. Ever year 11 million tons of shingles are removed from residential roofs with each house generating about 3.5 tons. Those 3.5 tons equates into 1 ton of oil that can be re-purposed into asphalt streets. Our patent pending dumpster allows RecycleGuy to haul directly to asphalt plants and dump them there for regrinding to be added to the mix at a later date.

The new dumpster is a fabulous invention that will catch on slowly because Shingle Distributors have hundreds of thousands of dollars invested in there delivery equipment which this will eliminate 70% of. Those that we allowed to try it out in the 2011 season loved it. The first time on the jobsite took some explaining because it changes what was thought as a waste product but once they discovered how to use it they loved it and made it so much easier on their jobs.

The Impact

This is a Green Program. It creates jobs, helps the environment, and cuts down our need on foreign oil imports. This is not a new program it has been done for years with new asphalt shingles which did not pass shingle manufacturers specifications or became outdated before being used.

Asphalt pavement companies would not take post consumer shingles in the beginning because they could not get them clean enough. But with advancements in grinding and magnetized metal removers for the nails they are now eager to get their hands on certified clean shingles. States are allowing 5 to 15 percent of the mix to be made up with asphalt shingles for State Highways. The shingle binding also helps stop rutting in the roadways because of the binder they have in them.

This new design that we need help in funding will simplify the sorting and contractors will get a discount for the waste removal bill if they will sort the shingles on the jobsite. By using this container they will save $100 to $200 per roof in dump fees.

What We Need & What You Get

We need to build 10 of these new dumpsters to get the program rolling. Each dumpster costs $7,500 so we are trying to raise $75,000. We are also applying for an SBA Loan to help with the program because we need to add another truck for each 10 dumpsters. If we do not reach the $75,000 in funding we will build what we can with the money we receive.

If you help us with our initial startup we will give you quarterly updates of what we are accomplishing and you will be able to follow us online. If you are within our service area we will also make you an unbelievable deal on recycling your old roof.

Other Ways You Can Help

If this is not your type of endeavor you might know someone who might be willing to look at this as possibly an equity partner. We do have more plans than this initial request but we are concentrating on one step at a time. We have put over $35,000 of our own money into developing, building and going through the patenting process. When you start from nothing and have a new invention that will help save energy you really want to show what you have developed. Our problem is we did not want to show it to soon because it could be tweaked and copied so we needed to slowly work through the process and get the patent application stamped, sealed and delivered before we moved to this stage.