USG was the first wallboard manufacturer to contract with GRA’s parent company, Gypsum Recycling International, to purchase reprocessed gypsum for the production of new wallboard. GRA’s first facility, located in Cambridge, Mass, started collecting new-construction wallboard scrap in March. This fall, the scrap will be processed by a patented new mobile recycling machine. The machine then converts the material into a gypsum powder that USG’s plant in Charlestown, Mass, the state’s only wallboard manufacturer, will reuse in making new wallboard.

GRA’s Cambridge recycling facility can process a permitted capacity of 60,000t of recycled gypsum a year. As GRA expands in the Northeast, USG’s plants in Stony Point, N.Y., and Baltimore, Md., will also purchase the reprocessed gypsum. Massachusetts was chosen as GRA’s first site because of the state’s strong interest in gypsum recycling.