Every year, 136 million tons of construction and demolition (C&D) debris is created in the United States. That’s 40% of the solid waste stream in the country. Fortunately, demolition companies can help minimize C&D waste by salvaging as much as possible from deconstruction projects. With the right techniques, an industrial demolition contractor can salvage 90-95% of materials from a building site, decreasing the demand for virgin materials and diverting hundreds of tons of waste from landfills.
Salvageable materials include ferrous and non-ferrous scrap metal, concrete, and building materials such as support beams, wood flooring, pipes, doors, and bricks. Fixtures such as sinks and lights may also be removed by hand and sold. Concrete may be recycled into pipe bedding, filler, or road base. By selling or repurposing as much as possible, demolition firms can save their clients serious money. Scrap metal demolition recycling, for instance, can sometimes bring hundreds of dollars per ton of material. Depending on the state, even drywall gypsum can be recycled. Materials that cannot be resold can be donated to local nonprofits that sell salvaged materials to the public.
Green demolition is a specialized type of deconstruction that involves taking a building apart piece-by- piece, often using hand tools. This approach is laborious, but it is a great way to salvage materials, since it allows more materials to be reused, repurposed, or recycled.
There are many benefits to salvaging materials from demolition projects: Reduced demolition costs, the creation of new jobs in the salvaging industry, and smaller landfills, to name just a few. Additionally, since the availability of recycled materials helps lower the demand for virgin products, the overall production of emissions drops as industrial demolition contractors salvage more building materials.
Elder Demolition is an industry leader in salvaging demolition materials. As one of the leading scrap metal demolition firms on the West Coast, we can salvage nearly any metal structure, from radio towers to oil tanks. And we maintain our own mobile concrete crusher to turn old concrete supports into fill. You can count on us to maximize assets from any demolition project, thereby minimizing our clients’ costs.
[Photo by: siftnz via CC License]