Asphalt shingles are a significant component of the waste stream: over 30,000 tonnes of them are generated every year in Nova Scotia. That's equivalent to the total weight of all the paper collected from homeowners by the municipalities every year.

Dan Chassie is owner and president of Halifax C&D Recycling, a company he and his wife Lee Anne started in 1995. Dan is credited with spending much of the last 10 years working to find a way to process asphalt shingles into two new products - asphalt grit and asphalt flake. Asphalt flake is currently being used as an alternate energy source to coal, and asphalt grit is now being used by Ocean Construction to make asphalt pavement. Dan is working towards patenting the process he developed.