Residential Construction Waste Management Demonstration and ...

OVERVIEW
This report covers the first year of a planned three-year project to evaluate and demonstrate costeffective,
voluntary alternatives to the disposal of residential construction waste. The first-year
tasks were designed to provide builders, manufacturers, waste management firms, and solid waste
officials with the tools required to investigate alternatives to disposal. The results of this
investigation will be used in the second year to develop pilot programs to demonstrate selected
alternatives to disposal. In the third year, guidelines will be developed for builders to consider
as they begin programs to improve their approach to construction waste management.
The work during the first year of this project consisted of the following five tasks:
Task 1.1 Development of a background paper on construction waste--its generation, regulation,
handling and disposal, and alternatives to disposal. The background paper served as
a primer covering the basics of current construction waste management in the United
States and opportunities for alternatives to disposal.
Task 1.2 Planning and convening of construction waste management workshops in three
locations. The workshops were designed to bring together a group of key decision
makers and players in construction waste reduction and recovery. In a guided
discussion and with the information from the background paper at their disposal, the
participating builders, developers, waste haulers and processors, product
manufacturers, and local/state government solid waste officials explored alternatives
to disposal and the development of such alternatives in their own community.
Task 1.3 Conduct of waste assessments in the same three locations to add to the limited
database on the quantities and types of materials generated during residential
construction and to identify opportunities for waste reduction. House design, material
ordering, subcontract arrangements, material use, and installation were all evaluated
to identify opportunities to reduce and recover construction waste materials.
Task 1.4 Discussions with selected product manufacturers to encourage modifications to their
products and/or the packaging of their products for greater resource efficiency.
Reduced packaging and/or use of recycled materials in production were explored with
the manufacturers. Their reactions and comments helped identify manufacturers
interested in participating in the second-year demonstration projects.
Task 1.5 Development of a task report and preliminary guidelines for builders interested in
construction waste management. This task also included various dissemination
activities.
Results of the tasks listed above are presented in the following sections.