Waste Not

IF YOU'RE LIKE MOST BUILDERS in this country, there is a good chance you don't really know what's in your dumpsters. You know, for example, that they're filled with cardboard boxes, drywall scraps, plywood, bricks, blocks, 2x4s, and engineered lumber, but you don't realize what all this waste means to your bottom line. To put it another way, you don't know how much money is in your dumpsters—money that you are, in effect, throwing away.

“Most builders think they know what their waste disposal costs are, but they have no idea,” says Peter Yost, a principal at 3-D Building Solutions, a high-performance building consulting firm in Brattleboro, Vt. And what you don't know is hurting your business.

Waste generation is an inevitable part of home building, but construction debris represents an opportunity that many builders have not realized. For instance, it is estimated that a 2,000-square-foot home generates about four to seven tons of waste. Most builders pay a fee to have this waste hauled off to a municipal landfill, which is usually priced at around 70 cents per square foot of the home's size. So, for a 2,000-square-foot house, a builder will be looking at about $1,400 in waste hauling costs, which go up as the size of the house increases. Plus, if you have wasteful building practices or have inefficient subs, the cost can be higher still.

If you're lucky enough to build in a jurisdiction where waste hauling fees are low, simply disposing of this material makes financial sense, even though it is not good environmental stewardship. But is having this debris hauled away the best practice for handling waste? It is not, says Yost. The fact is, tipping fees at most landfills are only increasing and waste haulers' fuel surcharges are going up as well. So, any builder who is interested in saving money should be looking at alternative methods to dealing with construction debris.

BEST PRACTICES

“Ask builders to upgrade the windows they put in their houses, they will tell you that it will be prohibitively expensive and will affect the bottom line, but if you ask them about sending their waste to a dump, they'll say it's not that much money,” Yost says. “[Builders] can't play it both ways. Twenty-five dollars is twenty-five dollars,” he argues.

In recent times, some builders have been pursuing a more thoughtful approach to handling waste disposal and realizing that there could be a financial gain in how they process this material. One such builder is Clarum Homes in Palo Alto, Calif.

A builder with a strong commitment to the environment, Clarum Homes builds move-up single-family attached and detached zero-energy homes—meaning, the houses reduce energy consumption by 90 percent and produce more energy than they use—with standard features such as solar panels and tankless water heaters. Three years ago the company was hauling away five tons of waste for each house it builds at a cost of about 40 cents to 60 cents per square foot, says president John Suppes. This translated into $800 to $1,200 for a 2,000-square-foot house. “That's about average for the state,” he says.

Today, Clarum no longer sends its waste to a landfill—at least not all of it. The builder now recycles 85 percent to 90 percent of its debris and most of this waste is put to good use right on the jobsite, which saves money in areas with high tipping fees. Suppes says, for example, that Clarum could grind 36 yards of debris a day with a crew of one truck and the Packer 750 and the cost would be $750 in Oakley, Calif. (The Packer Suppes is referring to is the Packer 750 from Mableton, Ga.–based Packer Industries—maker of the self-contained, mobile, low-speed machine that grinds wood, drywall, block, brick, and asphalt roofing shingles into materials that can be used on site.)

A 20-yard waste hauling dumpster would cost $400 plus $50 per ton, which could add up to $550 easily per load and require two loads for a total cost of $1,050 for the same amount of debris. “Plus the site gets the added benefit of having material to reuse,” Suppes notes.

According to the EPA, 65 percent to 85 percent of construction waste consists of highly recyclable material such as concrete and mixed rubble, wood, and drywall. “Many building components can be recycled where markets exist,” the EPA's office of solid waste says in a fact sheet. “As of June 2004, more than 1,000 asphalt and concrete recycling facilities, 700 wood waste recycling facilities, and 300 mixed-waste facilities recycle demolition rubble in the U.S. Asphalt, concrete, and rubble are often recycled into aggregate or new asphalt and concrete products. Wood can be recycled into engineered-wood products such as furniture and plastic-composite decks, as well as mulch, compost, and other products.”

Recycling waste in available markets is great, but builders can also reuse waste right on the jobsite. “We found out about the Packer and believed we could do better [than what we were doing],” Suppes says. “We grind up bricks and blocks and use it around our foundations and retaining walls and for base rock under our sidewalks,” Suppes explains. “Wood products are ground to ½-inch sizes and used as mulch and for erosion control on the landscape. Gypsum is ground to a powder and used as a soil amendment.” The company uses its leftover asphalt shingles as road base or it sells them back to manufacturers, who add the materials into the production of new shingles.

This recycling and reuse strategy is a great environmental story, but there is a business story here as well. Clarum only started this recycle and reuse strategy at the end of 2005, so the system is in its nascent stage. Suppes says, however, that the company sees great potential. Waste disposal cost (and savings) per house depends on what jurisdiction the company is working in and what the local disposal costs are. For example, the city of Menlo Park requires builders to pay a $1,000-per-house deposit for waste disposal, but because Clarum Homes recycles and reuses its waste, the company is exempt from the fee.

Suppes says that in some cases it costs an extra 20 cents per square foot to reuse and recycle waste rather than send it to a landfill because the cost might include recycling, the extra man power to sweep up, and any non-recyclable material disposal that must be sent to a landfill. However, the extra 20 cents is usually off-set because the waste replaces materials that the company would have had to purchase anyway, such as mulch and filler material. It also depends on the tipping fee in the local jurisdiction. “If the tipping fee is high, we save money per house,” Suppes says. “In some urban areas, for example, the dump fees are very high.”

Clarum's strategy also has yielded an unexpected surprise: a new income stream. When there is a lull in its own grinding work, Clarum performs grinding work for other local builders, including Habitat for Humanity. Things are going so well that the company may be looking at purchasing another Packer, Suppes says.

Ken Patterson, president of Packer Industries, says he has builder clients all over the country and most, if not all, of these builders reusing their waste stream generally save money on two fronts. “They save money using mulch as a filter berm [in lieu of a silt fence] and as erosion control,” he says. “But builders have to put in a construction entrance as well. Instead of using gravel, they would use mulch. Everything added up can save builders $1,000 per house.” So now builders who would normally be paying up to $1,200 and more per house for waste hauling are paying $200 per house. “Which would you rather pay?” Patterson asks.

For builders who do not own a Packer (or a similar machine available from Concept Products Corp. in Paoli, Pa.), there are companies that will come to your jobsites and perform the services for a fee.

MATERIAL MATTERS - SOURCE: EPA WASTE OFFICE

The next step toward reducing the waste that leaves your jobsite is to reduce the waste you generate in the first place by implementing efficient construction practices, since not all construction waste can be used on the site. Items such as cardboard packaging, for example, must be sent to a recycling center, and oriented strand board with a radiant barrier must be sent to a landfill. Although regulations vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction for reusing jobsite waste, Patterson knows of only one state that has restrictions on adding any waste to the soil—North Carolina—so he feels that builders most everywhere should be doing this.

Yost agrees. Builders who are not thinking about reusing and recycling their waste are not thinking about the big picture, he says. “[Builders] ought to know their waste stream. It's a reflection of the quality of their operations,” he believes. “Plus, when that waste leaves that site, [builders] still own it and it is still their problem. It is long-term liability.” Yost continues, “For those people who say it is not cost effective to reuse, I am convinced that it is.”

“It's a mistake to not reuse the waste,” Suppes adds. “Landfill fees in most markets will continue to go up, material costs will continue to go up, and fuel will continue to go up.”

Clarum Homes launched a program that has significantly reduced the amount of waste it sends to local landfills and now grinds and reuses much of its debris on the building site. Here's how you can do it too:

• KNOW WHAT'S IN YOUR DUMPSTERS. It seems like a simple thing, but Peter Yost says knowing what items you or your subs are throwing away can tell you a lot about the efficiency of your construction practices and the quality of your buildings. More waste signals a problem.
• REUSE AS MUCH MATERIAL ON SITE AS POSSIBLE.Finding a way to reuse leftover bricks, lumber, and gypsum reduces how much waste you will need to haul to a landfill and significantly reduce the hauling fees you have to pay.
• RECYCLE EVERYTHING ELSE THAT CANNOT BE REUSED. Not all waste materials can be reused on site—it depends on the local codes—but many materials can be recycled in some way. The EPA says markets and recycling facilities exist for a whole host of materials including asphalt, plastic-composite decking, cardboard, and engineered lumber.

  - Nigle F. Maynard