Deconstruction? I bet you are familiar with demolition: A house, a big old backhoe, a few hours later a big pile of debris and rubble and a line of trucks hauling everything to the landfill. At that point all the waste may be out of sight, but it should not be out of mind.

So, what is deconstruction? The key principle is to salvage and save the embodied energy present in existing buildings. The Deconstruction Institute offers the following, more detailed, definition:

“…a process of building disassembly in order to recover the maximum amount of materials for their highest and best re-use.  Re-use is the preferred outcome because it requires less energy, raw materials, and pollution than recycling does in order to continue the life of the material. As a consequence of deconstruction, there are also many opportunities for recycling other materials along the way.”

Source: Deconstruction institute

Cathy and I are already knee-deep in deconstruction, working with our waste hauler to sort and recycle as much of the materials as possible.  Looking to the future, we’ve started to think about building our new home with future deconstruction in mind – nipping the Construction and Demolition (C&D) waste issue in the bud, right at the inception of the project.

Why is this important to us? Because the C&D waste has a significant impact on our waste stream, the environment and our carbon footprint.  The Economist published an interesting special report on waste that showed C&D debris as the single largest waste source. We do (or should) know that we (in the U.S.A.) have a particularly acute waste problem. Figures vary with different sources, but it appears fair to say that C&D waste comprises about 30% of our total solid or landfill waste.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) estimated the amount at 136 million tons for 1996 in its report ‘Characterization of Building-related construction and demolition debris in the United States’. That was over ten years ago. To my surprise it appears that no recent USEPA publications or statistics are available on this subject. Have things improved since? Maybe, or maybe not with the recent housing and construction boom.

What does 136 million tons mean? The Illinois Sustainable Technology Center has a fact sheet that helps visualizing the amount of C&D waste:

“We generate enough construction and demolition debris in the United States each year to fill a typical city street four feet tall with trash and run that wall from New York, NY to Los Angeles, CA six times – an estimated 136 million tons annually”

Source: Illinois Sustainable Technology Center

The same fact sheet provides a breakdown of C&D waste for commercial and residential projects. For residential demolition, which is somewhat applicable to our project, the largest source is wood at 34%, closely followed by asphalt shingles (29%) and the dubious category called ‘other’ at 19%.

Another interesting local fact is listed in the Illinois construction and demolition site recycling guidebook from 1997:

“Construction waste and demolition debris (C&D debris) comprise 20 to 35 percent of all the solid waste generated in the five-county Chicagoland area.”

Source: Illinois Department of Commerce and Community Affairs

Back to deconstruction: I had the privilege to attend a Chicago Chapter U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) event on April 2nd with a presentation by Ken Ortiz from The ReUse People. He went through a range of fascinating numbers, explained what deconstruction is all about and walked us through the process.

Based on Ken’s experience, the average residential home weights about 80 tons, of which 40 tons are above ground. Those 40 tons break down into about 20 tons of structural materials and 20 tons of fixtures. 70 to 80% of that and the 40 tons that are below ground would go into a landfill in a conventional demolition case.

Ken pointed out that 72 to 75 tons of materials (or 90 to 94%) can be salvaged, recycled and diverted from the waste stream. Only an average of 5 to 8 tons out of the 80 tons (or 6 to 10%) would need to go into a landfill. An average of 245,000 residential homes are slated for demolition each year, which could translate into a significant reduction in C&D waste if they were deconstructed instead. The reuse of the embodied energy would contribute to the carbon footprint reduction as well as responsible resource management.

Does it make economic sense? According to Ken Ortiz, it does. Although deconstruction typically costs twice as much as conventional demolition, the value of used building material donations can often be substantial and provide tax savings that pay for the deconstruction process. (For more information go to: http://thereusepeople.org/Deconstruction)

Ken Ortiz’s presentation at the USGBC event was a real inspiration and led us to think even harder about reducing waste, reusing materials, and recycling. To our delight, we learned about local salvaged material suppliers that offer a wide range of building material supplies from deconstruction projects and could supply the majority of materials for our green rehab project.