[Greenbuilding] Landfill is counted as waste management

[Reuben Deumling]

On Thu, Apr 3, 2008 at 7:14 AM, JAY WALSH <jaywalsh at usa.net> wrote:

>
> ... This amount of waste is
> the real issue here, material of which a high percentage COULD be recycled
> but
> is going straight to the landfill.
>
> The larger POINT in the LEED points system as I see it is to get
> developers,
> contractors and sub contractors to consider jobsite recycling and develop
> methods and on site systems to separate and recycle. For anyone who has
> worked
> in the building industry you know that "change" comes slowly here. The
> adoption and use of new materials and methods does not happen overnight in
> this industry and until recycling on the typical jobsite becomes a
> "standard
> of practice", any effort to change the course of this waste stream is
> important.
>

You make some good points. But we all had to learn to waste this stuff. Time
was it was utilized on the jobsite. Now with materials so (relatively) cheap
and hourly wages (often) quite high, no one seems to be much interested in
taking the time to pull nails or make a few extra measurements to use the
smaller pieces. I go through dumpsters all the time and pull out stuff that
should not be recycled. It should have been incorporated into that house
that now looms over the neighborhood and the dumpster and the cheesy new
landscaping. Failing that, it should have gone to the local building
materials reuse store, of which we (at least in Portland) have quite a
growing number.

Maybe municipalities (the bureaucrats who come up with such rules) should
start awarding points to jobs/builders that do without the dumpsters
altogether, or that manage to get by with fewer and who have invoices or
receipts from the above mentioned organizations showing that they gave them
the right of first refusal on their building material scraps. For a counter
example look at metals these days! High prices--and folks figure out they
did want to keep those out of the dumpster and take them to the scrap dealer
on the weekend.:-)

Reuben Deumling