GREEN Building

Being green (environmentally responsible) is more than a slogan or a “brand” – it is a mindset of mindfulness and responsibility. Being green and building green is a worldview, a paradigm shift to a collectively healthier way of existing.

If you haven’t already incorporated green building techniques into how you work as a construction contractor, you will soon be left behind by a market that is quickly increasing its demand for an environmentally sensitive mindset.

Fortunately, it’s simple to start right now to incorporate green habits into your business, and to profit nicely by them.

There are many alternative materials that you can use in place of more wasteful and polluting ones. Making these alternative material options available to your customers will rocket you to the head of the line.

The U.S. Green Building Council’s LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certification is a hugely beneficial marketing tool. Even if full LEED certification is not your primary project goal, committing to recycling a certain percentage of the materials generated at a jobsite can give your company a lot of LEED points and a strong edge over
your competition.

And right there is the easiest way to start “going green” – recycling your C&D (construction & demolition) materials.

It’s currently estimated that if all the concrete and asphalt pavement generated annually in the US were to be recycled, we would save the energy equivalent of 1 billion gallons of gasoline, the same as taking more than 1 million cars off the road.

Truly mind-boggling – that’s just a single year’s worth of recycling one category of material. Our dependency on foreign oil has become a huge issue of national security and economic stability, and just think – here is a simple homegrown way to help save the planet and keep our country both safe and strong!

Okay, down to brass tacks: recycling your C&D can lower your overhead. It can reduce your hauling and disposal costs, including labor, transportation, and disposal fees. It can even put money IN your pocket, if you take the time to learn the recycling opportunities in your area and work them into your job cost projections.

There is a wide variety of markets for C&D materials. Contact your local recyclers to find out what each one accepts and if they require that the materials be separated. Often, separating materials at the jobsite increases the value of the materials, but some recyclers will take mixed loads when separating at the jobsite is not practical.

Here’s a sample list of materials and, once recycled, their lucrative ‘green’ market opportunities:

Concrete:
- Road base
- General fill
- Drainage media
- Pavement aggregate

Asphalt Pavement:
- Aggregate for new asphalt hot mixes
- Sub-base for paved road

Asphalt Shingles:
- Asphalt binder
- Fine aggregate for hot mix asphalt

Wood:
- Feed stock for engineered particle board
- Boiler fuel
- Recovered lumber re-milled into flooring
- Mulch and compost
- Animal bedding
- Paper products

Drywall:
- Gypsum wallboard
- Cement manufacture
- Agriculture (land application)

Metal:
- Metal products

Cardboard:
- Paper products

Your first step should be to locate all the recycling resources in your area. Contact your local and state waste regulators, and find out what is and is not allowed to be recycled. These folks will also have lists of recyclers and their contact info, and should be able to give you pointers on best recycling practices for your area. Your local waste haulers will also know about recycling opportunities.

Implementing a tracking system will aid you in attaining LEED points for recycling, since green building certification grants points based on recycled amounts. Have your waste hauler report the types and amounts of materials that are recycled from your construction site, that way you can evaluate the process and increase the amount of materials recycled.

But recycling doesn’t all have to take place off-site, or be done by ’specialists’. You can completely eliminate hauling and disposal costs, as well as the cost of new materials, by recycling and reusing materials right on the jobsite. For example, you can grind up waste concrete and use it as fill, or grind up clean wood, drywall and cardboard and use it as soil amendment. There are small, portable and relatively inexpensive grinders available that can be hitched to a pickup truck and used safely at a jobsite.

At the other end of the recycling road are the recycled “green” building products themselves. With your proven knowledge and connections, you can present yourself as a green builder and/or construction materials recycling authority, profitably offer green materials to your customers, and use green materials in your projects all the way to full LEED certification.

Here are some useful organizations that can help you locate local C&D recycling resources, and give you great ideas on how you can profit handsomely from the “green revolution”:

Construction Materials Recycling Association
cdrecycling.org

U.S. Green Building Council
usgbc.org

National Demolition Association
demolitionassociation.com

WasteCap
wastecapwi.org/candd.htm

Going green can put a lot of green in your pocket, so start recycling and reusing right now. Go Green Builders!