Buried in a Mountain of Construction Debris
By Mathew Ritter
Construction and Demolition debris contributes to the vast majority of waste sent to the landfills and progresses the detrimental impact we as humans have on the environment.
In my 10 plus years of being involved in the construction industry, the one constant that has always lingered through my mind has been, ‘how do they get away with throwing skip loads of waste right into the landfills?’ With the spotlight finally on industries to reduce their waste and become a leading figure in the fight against climate change, how does the Construction and Demolition industry continue to slip under the radar so easily?
This plague, affecting the vast majority of job sites contributes up to a quarter of the overall waste stream in Canada alone. Aside from the sheer economic impact this has on companies, it also contributes to the ever-increasing severity of our impact as humans on the environment. After having witnessed this continuing trend for the better part of a decade in a variety of different countries, I feel that it’s something I can passionately and distinctly discuss.
In order to process the problem properly, I called upon the ‘How Might We’ tool to provide some clarity. This allowed for a high-level brainstorming session that facilitated the exploration of how we might reduce the amount of C & D waste going to landfills.
In review of this, the two prominent topics I found worth exploring were:
1: How might we train future generations of construction workers to be better informed on waste and recycling.
— By providing thorough education within the trade certifications process
— By giving companies incentives for training their staff in proper waste reuse and disposal
— By providing contractors with credits for taking continuing education courses
2: How might we create new quality materials for the construction industry that are recyclable, reusable and environmentally friendly.
— By putting more money into research and development of new recyclable materials
— By looking at what’s out there already that can currently be recycled.
— Look for updated versions of materials that can be used.
This ‘How We Might’ was a great way for me to focus on the problems at hand and allowed me to reframe them into actual opportunities we can possibly pursue. After having this understanding, my next step was to better grasp the end user’s themselves.
To focus on the user’s problems, I created an empathy chart (seen below) which allowed me to get into the mindsets of the different users and see how this problem might affect their lives.
I came about this by trying to realize what the needs are from the perspective of the different people involved in the industry. For instance, from a builders, the companies and an outsider’s point of views.
To really get down to the issues at hand we needed to dig deeper into the user’s everyday struggles when it comes to recycling and waste. The empathy chart was a perfect tool to help us get into the mindset of various user’s everyday struggles.
The research performed helped me to gain a better overall understanding of the true impact that C&D plays all around the world. The information obtained surprised me as I feel the construction industry can do much better in lowering their waste and increasing their re-use.
One post on reducing waste on construction sites mentioned how 8,000 lbs of waste is produced by the building process of an average house alone. In order to lessen this impact, it is important to have a comprehensive waste management plan in place to help lower the costs of disposal. Planning the project properly is another great step to lowering the waste caused by mistakes. Storing any useful materials on site instead of throwing straight into the bin and using scrap lumber for making shims and small patches will save you money elsewhere. Always look in the reuse pile before cutting full length pieces.
Along with this, recycling sinks, baths, countertops and kitchen cabinets are a great way to reduce the waste in construction. You can sell online or re-use on another project. At the very least, sending your re-usable materials to ReStore from Habitat for Humanity will help to lessen the load on landfills.
After reading, I took from this that planning ahead is really the greatest way to help reduce waste on site. Setting up an area designed for trash and an area designed for re-usable waste will be a tremendous help in lowering your impact and costs.
The reality of recycling construction waste hits home when we start to look at what makes up the majority of C&D. We see heavy, bulky residues that typically take the form of concrete, wood, asphalt and gypsum board. These all have their own challenges when wanting to reuse or recycle them, however recycling these bulk items also has many benefits.
On one hand, the processes involved helps to create local jobs in the recycling industry and contributed to reducing the overall costs on projects. It also lowers the environmental costs associated with extracting new resources, production and subsequent landfilling. On the other hand, it can sometimes take more energy and resources to recycle than it does to just make new.
Another article on the recycling of construction materials using robots stated that the C&D materials were the largest municipal solid waste taken to landfill. The materials that had been diverted to the landfill had been increasing by 30% over the last 10 years. This is the completely wrong directions we hope for. This is a sobering statistic, especially paired with the U.S. EPA stating that in 2014, 534 million tons of C&D materials were send to landfill, with demolition making up more than 90% of it!
My main concern with this is represented well in the picture above found on Wikipedia. The majority of the demolition debris get put into one big bin, in turn making it almost impossible to efficiently extract the re-usable and recyclable materials.
According to the Construction Speciation Canada, the construction and demolition such as asphalt, gravel, concrete, ceramics, plumbing, insulation, bricks, wood, glass, metal and electrical fixtures make up 23% of the overall waste stream. With the construction industry also being the greatest producer of wood waste, making up around 23–45 percent of all solid waste generated in North America.
These statistics remind us that we have much room for improvement. The challenges for recycling in North America of C&D are quite present when trying to reduce our impact to landfills.
For example, the lack of outlets for recovering certain materials is a stark reality. On top of this, traveling materials to the sorting centres create constraints of space for storage. Some materials will produce a higher management cost and some materials become mixed, making them higher risks of contamination.
So, what needs to happen next?
In order to meet change, we must focus on the large companies that pollute. We need to understand how much power these construction companies have that they are not held accountable for their own C&D? Especially in today’s world of environmental activism this seems like the largest factor in enacting change. The sheer amount of money that could be saved should be enough for them to recognize this as a serious concern to their budgets.
We must get companies to understand that plenty of pieces they deem garbage are actual beneficial to other people. One man’s junk is another man’s treasure.
There’s a lot of negativity surrounding this topic, however I see some light at the end of the tunnel. When we witness places like California and British Columbia enacting laws forcing companies to meet certain waste requirements, we realize that some parts of the world are making strides to be more efficient and focus on a zero-waste approach.
In Port Moody BC, they passed a law back in 2011 which required companies planning developmental projects to obtain a permit and place a deposit. This deposit is held until a manager deems they have meet the requirements at the end of their project. This is the first city to implement and develop such a strategy which just shows that it Canada is on the right track for real progress.
Now personally, I am not so sure we will ever get to a zero-waste standpoint with construction as it seems that all things have some form of unusable by-products. Although I hope that one day, I am proved wrong.
Thanks for taking to time to ready through this post and I hope you all have a better grasp on the intricacies of construction waste and reusability.
Research
Johnson, Gail. “A Growing Green Gap in the Construction Waste Market.” The Globe and Mail, 9 Dec. 2011, www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/small-business/sb-growth/a-growing-green-gap-in-the-construction-waste-market/article4180610/.
Johnson, Gail. “A Growing Green Gap in the Construction Waste Market.” The Globe and Mail, 9 Dec. 2011, www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/small-business/sb-growth/a-growing-green-gap-in-the-construction-waste-market/article4180610/.
May 2, 2019 / Posted in: Builders. “Reduce Waste on Your Construction Site: Norbord — North American Products.” Norbord, 9 Dec. 2019, www.norbord.com/na/blog/reduce-waste-on-your-construction-site/.
“Recycling of Construction and Demolition Materials (C&D) in North America: What Is the Current Situation?” Waste Robotics, 23 July 2018, wasterobotic.com/en/2018/06/27/recycling-of-construction-and-demolition-materials-cd-in-north-america/
Slowey, Kim. “Report: Global Construction Waste Will Almost Double by 2025.” Construction Dive, 13 Mar. 2018, www.constructiondive.com/news/report-global-construction-waste-will-almost-double-by-2025/518874/.
