25 Weirdest Grinding Applications

| Industry Insights

25 weird grinds

Rotochopper started when a Midwestern farmer decided to turn paper and wood waste into animal bedding. Twenty-five years later Rotochopper grinders are at work in diverse and sometimes bizarre settings around the world.

What do you do when you need to turn 500-pound blobs of candy into pig food? Or when you need to compost millions of chickens and turkeys that died of avian flu? Or when you need to grind contaminated trees in an abandoned uranium mine? Or when a dead whale washes ashore and you’re out of dynamite?

You turn to Rotochopper.

Since 1990, entrepreneurs with unique raw materials have turned to Rotochopper for solutions to their challenging—and sometimes weird—grinding applications. In honor of the 25th year of Rotochopper, here are some of the most interesting raw materials ever processed with Rotochopper grinding equipment.

The Strangest Feedstocks Processed with Rotochopper Grinders

  1. A dead full grown sperm whale that washed ashore in Halifax
  2. Uranium contaminated trees in Ontario
  3. Pallets of unopened beer cans in London
  4. Confiscated marijuana in California
  5. Blobs of Big Red® chewing gum the size of refrigerators in Iowa
  6. Millions of mink carcasses in Nova Scotia
  7. Contraband cigarettes in Ontario
  8. Dead pigs in Indiana
  9. Thousands of Viet Nam War ammunition boxes in Nevada
  10. Fiberglass windmill blades in South Dakota
  11. Millions of dead quarantined turkeys and chickens in Iowa
  12. Blobs of licorice waste in Minneapolis
  13. Reject McDonalds® Happy Meal toys (by the truckload) in Pennsylvania
  14. Hospital mattresses, hospital gowns, and operating room medical waste in Minnesota
  15. Pen manure (compacted straw and calf manure)
  16. Entire mobile homes in Indiana
  17. Tumbleweeds in Nevada
  18. Roadkill animals, including deer, in Ontario
  19. Reject Snickers® bars in Iowa
  20. Compacted, hardened balls of breakfast cereal (2 – 5 feet diameter) in Michigan
  21. Reject dog food biscuits in Missouri
  22. Dead dogs from a dog pound in Texas
  23. Sleeping bags in Oregon
  24. Reject gummy bears in Iowa
  25. All the returned 1996 phone books for the entire country of Australia in Queensland

The Solution for Weird—and Common—Grinding Applications

And of course, Rotochopper grinding equipment is also at work around the world in typical applications, grinding billions of pallets on every continent except Antarctica, among many other feedstocks.

What grinding challenges do you have? We’re always looking for new additions to this list.

Give your local Rotochopper rep a call to get started.

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