Gypsum Recycling at Clayton® Facilities Combines Innovation, Sustainability

While looking for solutions, the facility found an area where they could make an impact: scrap drywall from gypsum wallboards. Drywall is a construction material used for interior walls and ceilings, and is a leading contributor to construction waste across the industry. Despite being recyclable, there are limited outlets to recycle it, so the majority is often sent to landfills.

However, drywall is primarily made of the mineral gypsum, making it ideal for composting. It provides key nutrients to the soil and also helps improve its structure for better water drainage.

The Experience

In 2021, Clayton Savannah, where Lisa previously worked, was awarded the Governor’s Environmental Stewardship Award in Materials Management for their efforts to recycle gypsum wall boards with a nearby state park.

Clayton Savannah had examined the facility’s waste streams and found that wood and drywall were among the most common waste materials, but often proved difficult to recycle. They joined the Tennessee Green Star Partnership, which is an environmental leadership program facilitated by Tennessee’s Department of Environment and Conservation. With the department’s support, they worked to create the right drywall composting mixture. And the relationships the team built were also beneficial to demonstrating how this recycling concept could work.

In 2021, Lisa came to Clayton Giles to help create a similar process.

The Partnerships

In February 2022, Clayton Giles began partnering with Rockwood Sustainable Solutions, a recycling company in Lebanon, TN, as they began trials to recycle drywall that could then be added to soil.

In late 2023, as Rockwood’s business grew, they announced the opening of the state’s first drywall recycling facility. That December, Clayton Giles conducted a pilot project with Rockwood’s partner Arrowhead Ag, an agricultural products company also located in Lebanon. Rockwood accepts the gypsum wall board scraps and then sorts, sizes and processes them, including removing the board’s laminated paper, before they are sent to Arrowhead Ag for further processing and distribution. The final ground gypsum product then has several potential uses, including as a soil additive or fertilizer.

Lisa noted it was important to work with passionate companies that can deliver a good product and are also looking to be a force for good in their communities, just as Clayton is.

The Community

To help ensure the success of the program and buy-in from their team, Clayton Giles wanted to make sure it would be easy for team members to sort and stage the scrap material. One of the big questions was how to collect the drywall scraps, and then how to transport it to Lebanon. The material would need to be loaded and transported via truck, similar to how the facility receive raw materials.

Both Lisa and Bill Shipley, the facility’s Environmental Health and Safety Coordinator, agreed on the importance of sharing the story behind why they were asking team members to focus on this recycling effort. Clayton Giles has been a part of the community for 65 years. Residents love to be outside on the lake or hunting and fishing, so there’s a genuine desire to preserve those natural resources, Lisa said.

And it’s that love of community that led team members to design their own jig to maximize the amount of drywall that could be sent for recycling and help with weight distribution. The team created a three-sided box with a pallet bottom that would make it easier to stack and band the material for shipment before it’s loaded onto the truck. Currently, each shipment weights about 40,000 pounds.

“This didn’t happen overnight, but has evolved,” Bill said of the process.

The Future

With the costs to send waste materials to the landfill on the rise, Giles is now actually paying less to recycle the gypsum wall boards. And because they typically still have some space in the truck once it’s been loaded, they’re also working to see what other materials they can recycle, like plastic wire spools.

Since the beginning of the project, over 3.1 million pounds of gypsum board have been recycled from Clayton Giles alone. And that’s just the beginning. Several other Clayton facilities in East Tennessee are now recycling their gypsum through the Rockwood partnership, including TRU® White Pine, Clayton Bean Station, Clayton Appalachia and Clayton Maynardville. In total, Clayton facilities have recycled 6.2 million pounds of gypsum so far.

“We have a responsibility to be good stewards and neighbors in the communities where we live and work, said William Jenkins, Clayton Home Building Group® Vice President of Sustainability. “Often, our greatest opportunities stem from our greatest impacts. This partnership is a great example of a team leading change in their community, helping to build responsible outlets for their scrap materials, in turn reducing their local waste impact and supporting other businesses. We’re proud of their ingenuity.”

Learn more about Clayton's key initiatives, partnerships, and milestones on our Newsroom.