Waste Management

Photo: Peter Craven. License: CC BY 2.0

Construction waste management (CWM) is the recycling or reuse of excess building materials—everything from drywall offcuts from new construction to an entire building’s worth of bricks from deconstruction.

When materials are purchased for a job and then go unused or wasted, avoidable costs and environmental burdens result. Attention to CWM, especially when starting early in design, can reduce tipping fees and earn LEED credits.

Waste Management

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  • Waste Not, Want Not: Case Studies of Building Material Reuse

    Feature Article

    Reclamation and reuse of building materials can be a tough sell and hard to design for, but many project teams have learned to make it work. Here’s how.

     

  • Prefabricating Green: Building Environmentally Friendly Houses Off Site

    Feature Article

    Prefabricated housing offers several potential environmental benefits, including reduced transportation impacts, reduced waste, and quality control for better durability and performance. Aside from a few industry leaders, however, most manufacturers do not take full advantage of those efficiencies to create affordable high-performance houses.

  • Treated Wood in Transition: Less Toxic Options in Preserved and Protected Wood

    Feature Article

    Following the recent phaseout of CCA, the dominant wood preservative of the last 30 years, the treated wood industry is in major transition. Some current wood treatment technologies present familiar environmental problems, while less-toxic alternatives are just entering the market.

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  • Reclaimed Building Materials in the Age of COVID

    April Fools

    Using reclaimed building materials is a great way to save resources and lower the embodied carbon of a building, but obtaining these materials in the age of COVID has created a new set of legal and ethical challenges.