Codiak Herrell

Photos by Holly Herrell and Courtesy Recycled Granite

One question every stone fabrication shop in the nation will have to eventually confront: what to do with all their accumulated, unusable scrap stone? A busy stone shop can produce up to 8,000 pounds of scrap granite every business day. That’s equivalent to two full loads of Braxton-Bragg’s Hercules DS Self-Dumping Steel Hopper.

The Tomahawk Stone Splitter is capable of producing evenly- sized rectangular granite pavers and curved firepit blocks.

The Tomahawk Stone Splitter is capable of producing evenly- sized rectangular granite pavers and curved firepit blocks.
The Tomahawk Stone Splitter is capable of producing evenly- sized rectangular granite pavers and curved firepit blocks.
The parking lot ploy – free granite scraps for the taking. Not surprisingly, this works.

Above: The parking lot ploy – free granite scraps for the taking. Not surprisingly, this works.
Mixed granite and marble scraps in irregular shapes and sizes give this colorful patio floor a fieldstone look. Recycling and repurposing can save millions of tons of good stone from being dumped in waste piles and landfills.

Above: Mixed granite and marble scraps in irregular shapes and sizes give this colorful patio floor a fieldstone look. Recycling and repurposing can save millions of tons of good stone from being dumped in waste piles and landfills.

A well-known tactic that I have noticed shops around my area using to get rid of scrap is putting all of it on a pallet by the road, in hopes that people will take it off their hands for home projects such as stepping stones, garden bed decorations, or crafts. And from what I hear, the scrap goes quickly. 

But if a shop is not located by a convenient, busy roadway, such as a highway, and an abundance of land is available, a shop can keep dumping their scrap in a field, eventually creating a mountain of scrap over time. Although a mountain of stone is a haven for D.I.Y., and serves its purpose when you need a color sample, eventually someone (like the shop owner) will need to confront that mountain. 

On the plus side, a company can benefit from its accumulated scrap by reusing all the scrap stone on their parking lot, when it is time to expand, by setting a layer of scrap stone down and covering it with crushed rock. Or, one can make the scrap into gravel and reuse or resell it, although considering the price tag of a gravel-making machine, that’s not as attractive a solution. One company mentioned how they donated their scrap to their community after a natural disaster, for filling sinkholes. 

To reap some profitable rewards for your unusable scrap, Braxton-Bragg offers a machine called the Tomahawk Stone Splitter, which is designed to break scrap into uniform length tiles. This versatile tool is easy to use, moderately priced and a necessity to any small shop with scrap overflow. Altogether, over 100 shapes and sizes can be produced from the Tomahawk in comparison to a stone tumbler or vibrator. But more importantly, this machine promotes the recycling granite and build green movement for smaller shops. 

A major contributor to the recycling granite movement is none other than the company Recycled Granite, whom you may have heard of before due to their work on 14 HGTV and DIY TV shows, and numerous public projects across the country. To date, Recycled Granite has saved over 80,000,000 pounds of granite remnants from being dumped into landfills, by repurposing.

Their mission, as told by Julie Rizzo, CEO and founder of Recycled Granite, is to “create jobs, reduce waste, and make the world a better place.” Recycled Granite understands that one fabricator does not have enough machines and time to recycle all their own waste. Working with Recycled Granite will not only leave you feeling green, but also give you a Green Certification to add to your portfolio, showing customers that you are conscious of the environment. With 20 locations across the United States, it’s easy to set up involvement with Recycled Granite. Simply contact the nearest Recycled Granite location and work out an arrangement that is best for your shop. 

Do you feel like you are throwing away money or wasting valuable resources when you walk past the scrap bin? Julie Rizzo compared throwing away or burying granite to throwing away every piece of a cow. “We should be using every piece of stone because it has a use, and it’s a financial gain if we know what to do with it.” 

Just like recycling aluminum or scrap metal, there are rewards to this type of thinking, whether those benefits are for extra profit or to help the environment. The mindset of giving scrap granite to a landfill is on the outs. And it is up to us to start and maintain the trend of recycling. 


For more information on the Tomahawk Stone Splitter visit our archives for a product review: www.slipperyrockgazette.net/index.cfm/m/6/fuseaction/search.siteSearch?q=Tomahawk+Stone+Splitter&sa=Search&searchoffset=0.

See also Recycled Granite’s website for many reviews and videos profiling their work on HGTV, www.recycledgranite.com .