Tens of thousands of tonnes of asphalt shingles are disposed of in Calgary landfills every year, both from industrial waste and from the roofing industry.

But with the opening of a new first-of-its-kind recycling centre on the east side of Calgary, Northstar Clean Technologies is aiming to turn a lot of people’s trash—up to 80,000 tonnes per year of it—into metaphorical treasure.

In this case, the constituent composite materials that go into shingles with fibreglass, sand, and asphalt can be reused for the creation of new shingles, roads, or other industrial uses.

So attractive is the proposition of seeing a complete elimination of asphalt shingles from landfills, that the City of Calgary has relaunched the Shingles Recycling Program and will divert 100 per cent of the shingles received at the Spy Hill, East Calgary, and Shepard Waste Management Facility to Northstar’s Empower Calgary Facility for the next five years, starting in April 2026.

“With respect to any municipality, that’s the absolutely critical advantage we bring to any city. We can say to the city, whatever is going into your landfills, we can literally divert that to our facility and through a circular economy solution, provide usable industrial products out the back end,” said Northstar Clean Technologies CEO Aiden Mills.

Their new facility, which operates with a proprietary system to recycle the shingles, can process up to 40,000 tonnes of shingles per year with a day shift running, or up to 80,000 tonnes annually if it were to operate 24/7.

Mills said that the facility has been created to be commercially viable through a tipping fee to deposit shingles for recycling, and then through the sales of the end products.

He said all of the asphalt produced by the facility would be purchased by the national asphalt firm McAsphalt.

“This is asphalt, so it’s priced essentially like asphalt that’s on the marketplace. That can go into flat roofing. It can go into shingle manufacturing, or it can go into roads. So, it has the same application as the asphalt that would come out of a refinery. So that’s the real advantage,” said Mills.

Mills said the facility can also produce either hot liquid or pelleted asphalt, which is a game-changer for the industry. It means firms close to home get a more environmentally sustainable way of purchasing products for construction, but also it is a product that can be shipped globally to meet demand.

“It’s producing hot oil, if you’re using it, three hours away and blending it, etc, all good. If you want to ship it to Europe, that’s how you do it. So, this changes it globally as well, which is a huge step change,” he said.

Mills said the final product has the same flash point as virgin asphalt from a refinery and the same solids content, but tends to be a little bit harder than virgin asphalt.

A new type of circular economy for North America begins in Calgary

Emissions Reductions Alberta (ERA) invested $7.1 million into the facility, as part of their overall investment into 300 projects to reduce emissions in Alberta.

ERA CEO Justin Riemer said that the circular economy makes a lot of sense from an environmental standpoint, but doesn’t always translate into economic viability.

“What these folks are doing is they’re actually constructing a new business model, which is not easy, a first in kind. There’s lots of risk involved. So that’s where ERA comes in,” he said.

“We help to de-risk risky projects with our industry funds from TIER, from the carbon levies that we receive from the Alberta government. We provide these funds on a 50/50 match basis.”

Reimer said getting a supply agreement with the City of Calgary was a fantastic way to improve environmental outcomes as well as generate new economic opportunities.

“I think there is a huge need for the kind of product that Northstar is making, and we’re doing it with a product that otherwise just went to landfill. That’s fantastic,” he said.

Mills said that, depending on what happens in Calgary, hail or roofing seasons, the amount of product delivered to the facility will vary.

“From our perspective with the IKO Manufacturing supply, with our partnership with Ecco Recycling and with the city, we believe we will have more than enough to run more than 40,000 tons a year in aggregate to run this facility full time,” he said.

Mills said that the plant design was scalable to other locations across North America, and that the only limiting factor was having a population size that produces enough shingles for recycling—approximately 1.5 million people.

“The industry partner doesn’t have to go to a refinery. They can literally come to our facility, and we’re right there. So it can be deployed both from a feed stock and an off-take perspective.”

Some 16.5 million tonnes of shingles go into North American landfills every year, said Mills.

“Not one company is going to solve a 16.5 million tonne problem, but it’s actually great to be the first commercial facility to actually do that. But this is a rinse and repeat. Literally, if a city has more than 1.5 million people, we can build a Northstar facility,” he said.

“At the end of last year, I said we wanted to be the Tim Horton’s of asphalt shingle recycling. Now for the US, we might need to be the Dunkin’ Donuts and not the Tim Horton’s. But ultimately, this is all about rinse and repeat and deploying.”