I have visited residential construction sites and noticed a great deal of waste generation, for example, wood, drywall, etc. The majority of this goes to the landfill. Oh, the landfill. I have such memories of the city dump. Going to the dump, too, I'm often reminded by the sheer excess of American culture (myself included). In particular, there are two city dumps located along the bay. I went to one of them, to dump construction waste, and I saw an algal bloom eminating from the base of the mountain of garbage upon which I stood. It was reddish in color, as though blood was seeping up from the below and mixing with the shallow water in the bay. I later thought, this land is going to worth a million bucks someday. It's waterfront. It's the future Mission Bay.
Mission Bay was literally a bay/marshland in the past. The 1906 San Francisco earthquake created a great deal of waste. Construction debris was dumped in Mission Bay as San Francisco was reconstructed. A hundred years later, it's the current campus expansion of UCSF as well as numerous commercial and residential projects. (More info about the project can be found here: http://pub.ucsf.edu/missionbay/history/sitebody.php). I suppose, that in another hundred years, the whole bay will be looking for land to develop and strategically-located landfill would be gold.
Coming back to construction waste, the National Association
of Homebuilders (NAHB) has looked into the nature and development of construction waste. I found a nice little pie chart in a report they produced. I found a color version, too (shown). Unfortunately, a lot of construction waste is easily recyclable wood. I know that whenever I have a little construction project, I inevitably produce a pile of scrap wood. For example, a fence was constructed with 4"x4"pressure-treated wood for the posts. After the posts were set in concrete, a cut was made to make them all level. This left a pile of rather hefty-sized scrap wood. I have kept them for future use in other projects. i don't necessarily use them to construct a new project. For example, I used the 4"x4"s as a series of risers, similar in function as several saw horses or a large work table, when I was cutting drywall.
When I disasembled a wooden tool shed, I tried to salvage as much of the wood, in particular, solid wood without nails. I was able to salvage a series of solid 1"x8' planks that were used as shelves and without nails! There wasn't even any visible damage (from insects or water). To me, this was like finding gold. It would have probably cost over a hundred dollars for this material and I got it for free. Unfortunately, a contractor working on-site was more than willing to loot my findings. I was pissed for a long time because it took a long time to disassemble things without damaging the stuff I could reuse and I sorted them by grade & condition.
I haven't found a company or method to recycle used wood, removing the nails, and excising damaged portions, damaged from insects, water, etc. It would be great if asphalt shings could be recycled. The average roof is usually asphalt shingles. Having removed old shingles, it's a pain. Nails often come off with the various levels of shingles and ripping up old asphalt shingles releases dust into the air. I remember coughing up black stuff after removing old shingles. I also remember climbing over a pile of old shingles. I slipped, put a hand down to balance myself, and was pierced by a nail. Fortunately, it was a shallow puncture but painful, nonetheless.
I think builders are moving pretty well in reducing construction waste. Toolbase.org is a builder's web resource that has developed some Best Practices guidelines. Here is the exact link:
http://www.toolbase.org/ToolbaseResources/level3.aspx?BucketID=5&CategoryID=26
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