Even as curbside recycling has become the norm in U.S. cities for household trash, recycling for construction and demolition (C&D) waste, which accounts for more than twice the volume in America’s landfills, still just happens in fits and starts. It’s highly dependent on various state and municipal regulations that vary drastically, and boils down to the availability of C&D recycling facilities in local markets. On average, it costs builders more to recycle than to simply take their loads to the dump. What’s more, in the age of data science, it’s maddeningly difficult to ascertain consistent metrics on what exactly is being thrown out, and what’s being recycled.
Writing in JLC's sister publication, Builder, Joe Bousquin, explores the issue of C&D waste at a national scale. At the end of the day, there aren't a lot of choices available to builders other than reducing how much waste you generate on site.
"...It’s much easier, and requires less onsite labor, space, and diligence to simply supply a co-mingled box that workers can throw everything into, to be separated at a sorting facility later ... "the problem is, there aren’t that many recycling centers capable of doing that kind of sorting. According to the EPA’s 2017 C&D report, while there are more than 1,500 C&D-specific disposal facilities in the U.S., and thousands of other non-C&D oriented landfills that accept C&D waste, there were only 512 C&D MRF facilities as of 2012. The report drolly concludes, “there are regions of the country where reaching a C&D MRF requires hundreds of miles of additional transport.”
In that kind of scenario, even builders who want to recycle are faced with a conundrum. 'For the smaller builders, it’s a lot easier to be diligent in keeping waste to a minimum in the first place then to try to recycle it after the fact ...'"
