Recycling on the job site used to mean two bins: garbage and not garbage, but as green buildings become mainstream, landfill diversion has become a daily reality for wall and ceiling contractors.
“Nowadays when you visit a job site you will be surprised to see a complete recycle centre much like you might have at home, only with much bigger containers and different bins for all the different categories of waste,” says Murray Corey, executive director of the British Columbia Wall & Ceiling Association (BCWCA).
Although drywall contractors have been recycling scrap gypsum board for years, before recycling became more or less expected, scrap bins on most job sites seemed like huge clearing houses for virtually anything the crews needed to dispose of, says Corey. Once the work day was complete, people (or “binners” as referred to by some in the industry) would visit construction sites and perform the bulk of recycling, picking through the bins for metal and anything of value.
“Some of these guys have trucks and are very savvy about knowing what can be salvaged for cash or for further use,” says Corey. “The rest of us were pretty bad about just wanting the scrap to disappear down the garbage chute. I don’t think people realized just how much scrap was being generated on a building project.”
But all of that has changed. “On a job today, each trade is responsible for clearing their own waste,” says Corey. On LEED projects in particular, a detailed construction waste management plan that includes reducing, recycling, and reusing, must be submitted by the general contractor. The general contractor must implement a construction waste management plan that, at a minimum, identifies the materials to be diverted from disposal and whether the materials will be sorted on-site or co-mingled.
According to the Canadian Green Building Council (CaGBC), it is becoming common practice for developers to hire a LEED consultant, who will assist in the construction waste management plan and help ensure it is being adhered to. So far, the CaGBC is not aware of any specific issues of non-compliance—a sign that job site recycling is gaining acceptance by more and more trades.
Once the construction management plan is approved and the work is underway, managing construction waste materials is easier than it may first appear. Corey explains,“It starts with the clean-up regime on most sites today—each contractor is required to do his share of the clean-up. Typically they put someone from each trade on clean-up for an hour each day with the waste going to the recycle centre for sorting and disposal.”
Yet, that’s not to say all job sites operate equally. “I have been on sites so clean that I would happily sit down and have my lunch,” says Corey. “I have been on other sites where you fear for your life on your walk through.”
Corey says the new ways of managing construction waste are here to stay and are all positive changes for the industry. “There will always be some sceptics, but I think it’s like smoking and seat belts—we get used to the new way of doing things and most of us realize that these are improvements in how we treat the planet. We may not believe there is an immediate return for our efforts, but in the long run we know it’s the right thing to do.”
Timo Orava, Project Manager at Raicor Contracting, a BCWCA member based in Burnaby, BC, agrees with Corey. “We at Raicor value recycling and green thinking. Therefore, we try to do our part every day on the job sites as well as in the office. We believe that changing practices towards green thinking, and doing more recycling can be best achieved through government regulations,” he says.
Orava feels that because job site recycling is not yet regulated by government (like smoking and seat belts) the incentive to have a recycling program set up is not yet there for every company. Orava feels this has become a problem for contractors getting a fair shot at landing new projects.
“We are in a price competition market and if there is increased attention to job site recycling and green thinking, every company has to be on the same page. Improper regulations can cause situations where cheating companies win, and companies doing the right thing lose jobs,” he says, adding that recycling requirements typically cost a subcontractor more, so bids have to be higher as a result. “This wouldn’t matter if there was an equal playing field among the subcontractors and everybody was required to do the same. We would like to see the government step up and start making stricter regulations and monitoring them for a greener industry, and the entire world.”
Currently, the closest the provincial government has come to actually legislating job site recycling is banning certain items from garbage disposal facilities. For example, in Metro Vancouver, along with corrugated cardboard, newsprint, and other blue box recyclables, gypsum drywall can only be disposed of in recycling facilities.
One would think that the increased interest in green building has led to an increase in activity at construction waste management facilities, but Cheryl McKitterick at New West Gypsum Recycling Inc. says that is not the case. “We have not seen an increase in business in the last two years, but we have seen a significant increase in the number of customer requests for LEED Certification letters,” she says.
The letter, which is developed for contractors to send to the LEED certification board, verifies that the gypsum wallboard waste shipped to any of New West Gypsum recycling facilities is being processed on site and turned back into usable recycled material.
At New West, gypsum wallboard waste is processed mechanically by removing paper from the core, which is then refined back into gypsum powder. Recycled material is sent to gypsum wallboard manufactures to be used in new wallboard production. Paper is further processed into a wide variety of applications.
“New West Gypsum Recycling prides itself on this patented recycling process, which has made us a world leader in gypsum wallboard recycling,” says McKitterick.
Recycling indicates corporate commitment to the environment, and removing old materials carefully can provide an earlier view of potential problems. As well, consider the tipping fees, which, for separated recyclables, are considerably lower than mixed waste loads. In some cases, recycling cardboard and scrap metal may actually generate revenue.
Metro Vancouver wanted to discover barriers to recycling program implementation in May 2009 with a survey it presented residential renovation contractors. The survey examined the factors that hinder contractors from reducing waste on home renovation projects.
The survey, distributed to Greater Vancouver Home Builders’ Association members in person and online, confirmed that the top three barriers that hinder diversion of waste from renovation projects are: Lack of information and education (76% agreed that trades are not willing to participate or are not buying in to recycling on the job site; 59% agreed that they did not know what can/can’t be recycled in the region), Lack of appropriate hauling services (76% agreed that there is a lack of hauling services available to collect recyclables from smaller construction sites), and Space constraints on the job site (79% agreed that there is no space on site to sort and place recyclables).
A complete directory of places you can haul materials can be found at <www.metrovancouver.org/buildsmart>. The Demolition, Land Clearing, and Construction (DLC) Waste Toolkit is a reference guide for contractors, design professionals, and building owners, to help maximize the amount of construction and demolition waste diverted from disposal through salvage, reuse, and recycling. The toolkit was developed by Metro Vancouver’s Sustainable Business Services as part of its BuildSmart program.
For those looking for more information about job site recycling, Sellen Sustainability www.sellensustainability.com, a member of the Northwest Wall & Ceiling Bureau, is an international resource in green building, and a full-service sustainability consulting firm. Sellen Sustainability is a division of Sellen Construction Company, which helped pioneer the entire LEED process. A similar service in Canada is provided by Enermodal, www.enermodal.com a Canadian green building consulting firm which specializes in LEED consultation.
