Construction and Demolition Waste Reduction
Reducing waste is a fundamental component of
sustainability and has a new emphasis with the net-
zero installations initiative. In a facilities context, con-
struction and demolition (C&D) waste is generated as
debris produced by a building’s demolition and by
scrap materials produced throughout the construction
process.
DOD’s concerns about solid waste was manifest in
its 1996 Pollution Prevention Measure of Merit, which
directed installations to reduce their solid waste by
40 percent by 2005 (Department of Defense 1996). On
some installations, C&D materials constituted up to 80
percent of the solid waste stream. Meeting the DOD
Measure of Merit would be difficult with this amount
of C&D waste being generated.
In the 1990s three Army installations initiated in-
novative programs to remove obsolete buildings.
Rather than demolish obsolete buildings and landfill
the debris, they sold buildings, or recycle rights during
demolition, to the public. Buyers would deconstruct
buildings and salvage the materials, mostly lumber.
At these three locations alone, roughly 100,000 tons of
useable building material was diverted from landfills.
However, most installations at the time were still
disposing of debris in on-post landfills with little
consideration for waste reduction. Some demolition
specifications even required all materials to be depos-
ited in the on-post landfill, and prevented contractors
from extracting anything they may have found valu-
able.
Soon the Army began to recognize the benefits re-
using and recycling building materials to reduce C&D
waste. In 2001, the ASA I&E issued a memorandum