Residential Construction Waste Management Demonstration and ...

materials. However, waste separation is made easier with this process since the staged
visits result in reduced initial commingling and contamination of materials.
An increasing number of builders in both Portland, Oregon, and areas surrounding
Chicago are using jobsite services that employ passive time separation. Builders often
prefer this method because it can be significantly less expensive than other waste
management approaches. Further, charges for the service can be determined up front on
a square foot basis and one employee (laborer to clean up job sites) can be eliminated
from the general contractor payroll. One disadvantage of this approach is that it might
not interest large, well-established waste hauling firms and thus will require new entrants
to the waste management business. In addition, building and OSHA inspectors may
object to a containerless approach to on-site waste management.
Reuse of construction waste materials. Nonprofit building materials recycling
operations recover used building products and rejected building materials for discounted
sale to low-income homeowners. For example, The Loading Dock in Baltimore,
Maryland is the oldest retail business of its kind in the nation and has served as a model
for the establishment of numerous similar operations around the country. Material
received by the Loading Dock, whether picked up on-site or delivered to the warehouse,
represents a tax-deductible donation. The Research Center identified similar operations
in Portland and Grand Rapids.
On-site reuse of wood, drywall, and possibly cardboard may be possible after the
materials have been processed in a mobile grinder. At least one equipment manufacturer
markets a low-speed, low-noise, mobile grinder well suited for reuse applications. The
acceptability of on-site application among state and local sold waste officials can vary.
Many builders are interested in alternatives to disposal as long as the alternatives do not result
in increased costs, i.e., disposal options are usually pursued for their economic rather than
environmental benefits. In many cases, recycling is driven not by the value of the materials (a
market pull) but rather by the avoided cost of disposal (a market push). In fact, perhaps the most
significant impediment to the development of recovery opportunities is the low value of many
construction site recoverables.