LEED construction waste management: Green recycling methods for reducing carbon footprint.
Owing to alarming rate of climate changes and its consequences, there has been a push towards green and sustainable construction over the last decade. Many public and private institutions and persons have integrated green methodologies into construction projects. The goal is to develop sustainable, long-lasting urban projects that doesn’t over use resources, instead preserve it. The persons and institutions subscribing to the green concept strive to ensure that their projects are highly efficient, uses high quality materials, and provides long-term cost savings to future residents, owners, and end-users. This ensures that such projects make contributions to the neighbourhoods and communities that they are in.
USGBC, or the United States Green Building Council is one of the above mentioned private organizations leading the way. LEED is a program created by USGBC to set guidelines for sustainable construction and development. LEED, Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, is a rating system for an independent green building certification program. It provides voluntary guidelines. Based on the strategies used for building that are intended to improve human health metrics and environmental performances such as water savings, energy efficiency, material selection and so on, LEED provides a third-party verification. A project can obtain a Silver, Gold or Platinum certification based on the number of points it achieves in the LEEd rating system. As defined by USGBC, LEED is “a nationally accepted benchmark for the design, construction and operation of high-performance green buildings” and “provides building owners and operators with the tools they need to have an immediate and measurable impact on their buildings’ performance.” Healthier work and living environments are provided by LEED certified buildings, which in turn contributes to higher productivity and improved health and comfort of employes. The list of benefits of implementing LEED strategy compiled by USGBC ranges from reducing solid waste to improving air and water quality.
Construction Waste Management is a strategy that a real estate developer will encounter and try to attain. The basics of construction waste management is, instead of disposal in landfills and incineration of wastes obtained after construction or demolition or land clearing, some of them can be recycled and reused for construction. If at least 50% of non-hazardous construction and demolition debris is recycled by a teams, they can obtain this certification from the LEED. For achieving this, develop and implement an effective construction waste management plan that at least identifies materials to be diverted from being disposed off and whether the materials may be sorted on-site or mixed. Soil excavated and land debris does not count.
Most projects will involve some kind of demolition at first. This process in turn produces a load of waste materials. The first step is to identify materials that can be recycled. Concrete, structural steel, aluminium, wood, cardboard, plastic, glass, and carpet, etc are the ones that can be recycled.
Next, the project team needs to develop a plan for the removal and segregation of the materials that are diverted. Most contractors designate a particular area at the site for collecting the recyclable materials. It is advised to keep recycling bins with labels for each material. These plans should be coordinated by the General contractor with the help of subcontractors and suppliers. Make it into plan an review it periodically consulting the subs and suppliers.
The next step is to identify recycling centres that will accept the materials and someone to haul the waste from the construction site. The hauler should obtain receipts from the facilities accepting the material after dropping off the materials, which records the quantity of each load by weight. The same should be done with the non-recyclable materials before dropping them at the landfill. Both receipts are need for the team to determine the overall percentage of construction and demolition debris recycled.
There are facilities that take care of the recyclable materials right from sorting them out into different types onsite. All of the debris can be co-mingled (recyclable and non-recyclable) and taken to a sorting facility. Different sorting facilities has different rates.
There are several alternate ways to comply outside instead of taking the debris to a recycling centre. Materials can be salvaged onsite, if it fits within the scope of work. Whether or not a project is aiming for LEED certification,construction waste management plan should always be considered by a team. Recycled materials can be redirected back to the construction site or reusable materials can be redirected to appropriate sites which will help reduce carbon footprint of a project.Reduce, recycle, and reuse.