Lautenbach Recycling plans to build a recycling center that accepts construction and demolition materials in Bellingham’s Irongate industrial neighborhood.
Lautenbach Recycling, which owns several recycling-related businesses in Whatcom and Skagit counties, has operated a construction and demolition, or C&D, recycling station in Mount Vernon for 15 years. Contractors and self-haulers bring in up to 1,500 tons of material per month, and 30% and 40% of the volume comes from Whatcom County, company president Troy Lautenbach said.
“We know the environmental community has been asking for this service in Whatcom County for a very long time,” he said. “We have provided it through the transport of roll-offs but now we’ll offer direct hauling, and ensure that we’re not landfilling valuable resources in Whatcom County.”
C&D takes up a lot of space in a landfill and is one of the most straightforward materials to recycle or reuse. Concrete can be ground up to be reused as aggregate, asphalt shingles can be repurposed into road base, gypsum can be made into new drywall, scrap metal can be melted down, and wood can be mulched or sent to regional paper mills for biomass fuel.
It’s also cheaper to recycle than to dispose of, and the bulky material often travels fewer miles when recycled, which cuts down on emissions. According to the state Department of Ecology, in 2021 almost 4.2 million tons of C&D material was collected for recycling and recovery in Washington, but wood and construction debris still make up nearly a quarter of the waste stream, leaving ample potential for more diversion.
In summer 2024, Lautenbach Recycling purchased a 25-acre industrial property off East Bakerview Road to build a C&D sorting facility. Of the property, almost 12 acres are dedicated critical areas with protected wetlands, and the remaining acreage will house scales, a C&D sorting facility and material storage.
The site is adjacent to the forested Dewey Valley Open Space parcels, which the city purchased in November 2024 to build a park and continue the Bay to Baker trail.
It also sits kitty-corner to the Trickle Creek residential development, and some neighbors have voiced their concerns to the City of Bellingham about the possibility of heavy truck traffic, dust, odor and noise. Lautenbach estimates the site will see around 126 round trips per day by haulers and employee vehicles, and noted the operation’s dust and emissions are regulated by the Northwest Clean Air Agency.
As a condition of permit approval, the city will require that grinding of wood and concrete happen inside an enclosure, unlike at the Skagit County center, which Lautenbach said complicates the operation — those materials may be hauled to Mount Vernon for processing until an enclosure is economically feasible.
Eventually, Lautenbach Recycling plans to consolidate all its Whatcom County operations at the Irongate property. Currently, the company has a transfer station in Ferndale and a storage facility on Kentucky Street in Bellingham.
The Bellingham center will have a cardboard baler and could eventually be home to a material recovery facility, Lautenbach said. A recycling material recovery facility, or MRF, is where commingled recycling material, like what is collected in Bellingham’s single-toter curbside system, is sorted into different streams and packaged as commodities for buyers.
The closest large MRF is WM’s Cascade Recycling Center in Woodinville, where Whatcom County’s commingled recycling is currently taken.
Lautenbach emphasized his company’s desire to be “good stewards in Whatcom County.”
“We don’t want to be ABC Recycling,” he said, referencing a Canadian outfit’s unsuccessful attempt to develop a metal shredding operation on Marine Drive in 2023. “It’s really important to us to be part of the community.”
A previous version of this article misstated the amount of debris being recycled annually in the state — around 4.2 million tons were recycled in 2021. The article was updated on Feb. 10 at noon. Cascadia Daily News regrets the error.
Julia Tellman writes about civic issues and anything else that happens to cross her desk; contact her at juliatellman@cascadiadaily.com.
