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With 25 percent of the region’s waste being generated from construction and demolition activities, promoting recycling to the building industry has become a priority at regional government Metro.
Bryce Jacobson, Metro’s construction industry recycling project manager, is helping lead the agency’s waste education and outreach plan.
The campaign focuses on showing construction firms that recycling not only helps the environment, but helps a company’s bottom line as well.
“(Recycling) will make a company more competitive,” said Jacobson. “It will help you compete in the marketplace when owners put out jobs that have a salvage phase or require recycling, like the city of Portland.”
Of the 25 percent of waste that comes from construction and demolition activities, 60 percent of that comes from demolition. That’s one area Metro has been working hard to concentrate on by raising awareness and changing how companies think about demolition activities, said Jacobson.
“About half of what ends up at the transfer station is recyclable,” said Jacobson. “With construction and demolition, we could be doing a lot better job.”
Metro has conducted surveys that show contractors identify a lack of information as a barrier to recycling.
To combat this, Metro’s outreach plan involves partnering with local construction industry associations to help educate and promote recycling among member firms.
Associations that have agreed to a yearlong partnership with Metro include local chapters of the Associated General Contractors, the Associated Builders and Contractors, the Home Builders Association, the Oregon Remodelers Association and the Construction Specifications Institute.
AGC was the first organization Metro approached about a partnership.
“We were involved with Metro in a recycling push when the Oregon Convention Center was first built, but then the emphasis kind of died off,” said Cindy Catto, public affairs officer at the local AGC. “So we’re resurrecting our commitment to making people more aware.”
The general industry push toward more sustainable business practices also influenced AGC’s commitment to advocate recycling.
“It’s good business,” said Catto. “It’s also good for the community because we don’t fill up our landfills with stuff that can be recycled. It’s becoming a general awareness, the way of the future is to recycle and reuse the best we can.”
AGC already has many member firms that recycle, she added.
“A lot of demolition companies are on the leading edge in ways they demolish and reuse materials and find alternative ways to utilize what they demolish,” said Catto. “This was just a way to raise awareness beyond companies doing it themselves.”
Metro and AGC have formed an awards program together to recognize contractors for their recycling efforts. This year’s awards will be given out at AGC’s Annual Conference on Jan. 17.
A panel of judges chosen by Metro will distribute the awards, which will recognize general contractors that do over $10 million in annual volume and under $10 million in annual volume, and subcontractors that do over $5 million in annual volume and under $5 million in annual volume.
Nominations should include a description of the company’s recycling efforts and achievements, references, awards and photos or drawings. Jacobson will be accepting the nominations, which must be postmarked by Dec. 13.
Metro representatives also plan to make presentations at AGC monthly and annual member meetings; articles covering topics like recycling, salvage and deconstruction will be written by Metro staff for publication in AGC’s monthly newsletter.
Links on AGC’s Web site will also take members to Metro’s interactive version of its Toolkit, a construction industry directory of recycling and salvage options Metro created last year and available in a spiral-bound notebook or online at http://www.metro-region.org/toolkit.
The Toolkit lists over 90 different firms that reuse or recycle construction waste including material recovery facilities, which collect dry waste from a construction site and sort recyclable materials and dispose of the rest.
Recently, Metro began distributing its Recycling and Salvage Planning Guide, a supplement to the Toolkit that is designed to help architects, builders, developers and property owners develop recycling programs.
The Toolkit and Planning Guide will both be distributed to member firms of industry association partners.
Case studies outlining projects that involved deconstruction, salvaging and recycling are included in the Planning Guide.
The guide also features an appendix that offers sample forms for salvage and job site specifications, waste management plans and reports, recycling/salvage job cost tracking worksheets, letters to vendors and specification language for green building materials.
An interactive Web site that compliments the Planning Guide is still under construction, said Jacobson.
The next step in Metro’s building industry education and outreach plan is to create a way to measure the agency’s work in reducing construction waste.
“If we’re going to put our energy and effort into something like this, we need to know the effects,” said Jacobson.