Empowering our future through sustainable shingle material recovery

Formed in 2010, Empower Environmental Solutions Ltd. (“Empower”), a wholly owned subsidiary of Northstar Clean Technologies Inc. (“Northstar”), owns and operates a material recovery facility for asphalt shingles, of which 90-95% end up in landfills in North America. Empower offers a proprietary process for repurposing asphalt shingles at its Empower Facility, located at 7046 Brown Street, Delta, BC, about 30-40 minutes drive directly south of downtown Vancouver and only 9 km from the Metro Vancouver Landfill. The site of the Empower is conveniently located for roofing companies, roofing contractors, and waste haulers throughout the Metro Vancouver area. Unlike others, our operation offers roofing companies, roofing contractors and waste haulers 1) a lower cost option, 2) faster turnaround time, and 3) the full ‘circular economy’ landfill diversion for your discarded asphalt shingle products.

Through its proprietary Bitumen Extraction & Separation Technology (“BEST”), Empower is focused on recovering the three primary components of asphalt shingles. Empower’s process involves complete disassembly of the shingle into its basic components of aggregate, fibre and liquid asphalt. Empower’s process has none of the downsides of existing solutions for disposal of waste asphalt shingles. Extracting and separating the shingle into its constituent parts not only allows for full value to be extracted from each product stream, but it also completely avoids the operational challenges, such as low temperature cracking, that are present using RAS in hot mix asphalt, and most importantly, the BEST process can divert 100% of shingle waste from landfill. Through an independent life-cycle assessment, Empower’s process was found to save over 60% of carbon dioxide equivalent emissions, compared to virgin asphalt production and landfilling shingles.