Early recovery: collected data can yield insight into the potential of the deconstruction market

Construction & Demolition Recycling, July-August, 2004 by Brad Guy

This article looks at potential factors affecting deconstruction and building materials reuse industry development at the state level. In order to facilitate data collection and overcome differing micro-conditions at the city level, information sources included data from the U.S. Economic Census, 1997, the U.S. Census, 2000, surveys by the author and other sources of state-level data in the U.S.

In 2000 the National Association of Home Builders Research Center's (NAHBRC) released the "Feasibility of Deconstruction" study, which proposed broad community conditions to facilitate deconstruction and building materials reuse industry development. Four conditions were proposed:

1) sources of used materials, based upon public housing, large quantities of dilapidated structures, etc.;

2) deconstruction business structure, based upon existing demolition and deconstruction companies, building contractors, etc.;

3) labor source(s), based upon union membership, temporary labor sources, job-training programs, etc.; and

4) used building materials markets, based upon businesses dealing in used building materials, etc.

A principal conclusion of the study was that building materials recovery for reuse is less viable as a stand-alone activity. It is most feasible as a component of demolition, construction and renovation businesses. Building materials reuse also is nor necessarily dependent upon building deconstruction and salvage, as sources of materials for reuse and recycling include building materials distributors and retailers, the do-it-yourself marker and demolition and construction companies (NAHBRC, 2000).

In light of this study, an attempt was made to verify some of these market Factors and investigate other factors that might also be relevant to understanding the potential and the limitations for building materials recovery and reuse business development at the state level and from a market perspective.

IN THE NUMBERS

Many trends indicate that building demolition and renovation will continually increase as a portion of the overall U.S. construction industry, with simultaneous pressure to reduce C&D debris disposal.

This is significant because in 1996 the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) estimated that U.S. companies generated 136 million tons of building-related C&D debris, of which 92 percent came from renovation and demolition.

This study used figures from 1993. At that time, the American Housing Survey estimated that there were 96.7 million housing units in the U.S. There are an estimated 110 million housing units as of 2003, an increase of 14 percent in 10 years. The average replacement rate of U.S. housing units is less than 1 percent per year. At this rate, about 41 million housing units will be demolished from 2000 to 2050, resulting in the creation of 3.3 billion tons of debris. This does not consider commercial building demolition.

Residential remodeling expenditures in the U.S. have also grown, from about $47 billion in 1980 to $132 billion in 2000, an increase of more than 280 percent.

In spite of this growth, the recovery, reuse and recycling of building materials will be increasingly difficult from a technical and economic standpoint, while there will be increased social and environmental pressures to increase landfill diversion.

An example of a technical issue is the increasing use of sophisticated mechanical and electrical systems that increase "entanglement" of building materials and systems and the continuing shift from solid wood to engineered wood products, which cannot he reused and recycled within some established markets.

Examples of increasing regulatory pressures at the state level range from California's Integrated Waste Management Act (AB939), passed in 1989, which set a goal of 50 percent landfill diversion of municipal solid waste (including C&D) by 2000, to Massachusetts' looming C&D disposal ban policy.

From an environmental perspective, even minor reductions in materials consumption and waste creation by the construction industry will have large benefits. The U.S. Geological Survey estimates that construction activities consume 60 percent of all non-food/fuel raw materials used in the U.S. economy.

Of all the materials used in the U.S. in the 20th century, more than 50 percent were consumed in the final 25 years. Additionally, only 5 percent of the 3.4 billion tons of new materials entering the U.S economy in 2000 came from what were classified as renewable sources.

The U.S. EPA estimates that building activities produce 40 percent of all non-industrial waste. In 1999, the United Nations estimated that the construction industry on average accounts for 37 percent of global CO2 emissions through: building operation (10.2 percent); business operations (9.2 percent); materials production (10.9 percent); transport (5 percent); and construction work (1.5 percent). The single greatest proportion of CO2 emissions from the construction industry itself is from new materials production, at approximately 11 percent of global CO2 emissions.