REUSE RATHER THAN RECYCLE IS THE GOAL

About 86 per cent of the material from a deconstructed home is diverted to other uses, compared to 40-50 per cent from traditional demolitions, according to the City of Vancouver.

But saving space at the dump is only one measure of success.

“The vast majority of the demolition materials are being recycled, not reused,” according to a report to Vancouver city council. “Most wood, in particular, is being recycled as biomass fuel or as landscape mulch.”

“Only a very small amount” of the wood recovered goes to decorative purposes, and the city has no data on the amount used for construction and remodelling.

The city also has no data on the actual amount of wood that becomes fuel or mulch. In practice, very little demolition waste harvested above the foundation finds a higher use, said Tom Land, CEO of Eco-Waste Industries, which operates a demolition waste landfill.

To incentivize careful demolition, Eco-Waste charges lower tipping fees for waste that is clean and separated. Concrete and brick, along with pavement, can be used for road-building. Those materials usually arrive separately from the metal, wood and mixed materials from a home demolition.

About half of asphalt shingles can be recycled for paving, but due to metal and plastic contamination the rest go to landfill.

Most bins arrive as a messy mix of low-value and unusable material that goes into the landfill.

Most of the wood from conventional demolitions is ground up to be burned as fuel in waste-to-energy systems and in cement kilns.

“Most demolitions assign no value to the materials and so the next best thing is to create energy from it,” said Land. Eco-Waste is buying a plant to better separate wood from mixed materials and increase the amount that can be recycled. The company will also build a facility that will be able to extract wood, metal, shingles, plastics and cardboard from the waste stream.