Building a house generates a lot of trash. Strips of wood, broken bricks and leftover pieces of metal and plastic are all part of the process.
In fact, residential construction generates 2.5 million tons of solid waste in the state each year, according to the Waste Management Division of the N.C. Department of Environment and Natural Resources.
But all of that stuff doesn’t have to end up in a landfill. Construction site recycling gives those materials a new purpose and makes all the difference to the environment.
A company taking up this charge is WCA Waste Corp., a private, solid waste collector of construction and demolition debris. The national company, which has facilities in High Point and Raleigh, helps trash take a detour before it reaches the landfill.
When WCA picks up a load from a construction site, the trash begins its recycling journey at the company’s construction debris recycler, a four-acre pad that sits in front of the landfill. Trucks empty the debris into the co-mingled pile for sorting.
The excavator scoops up and drops material into the recycling hopper. First, it is shaken to remove the dirt and gravel. Next, heavier pieces are removed to be used as daily cover, material that is placed over the day’s waste pile to control rodents and reduce odors and litter. As the remaining debris travels down the long conveyor, recycling staffers hand-sort their assigned materials like metal, paper, vinyl and tires.
Items not recycled on site, like cardboard and steel, go to local processing centers like scrap yards. Once all the salvageable material is removed, what’s left is transferred to a landfill. Chad Morris, corporate sustainability manager of WCA Waste Corp. of High Point, estimates the High Point facility recycles 30 percent to 50 percent of the 200 to 400 tons of material received each day.
Recycled products are made on-site from collected materials. Land-cleared wood from trees and branches is cured and made into hardwood mulch for landscaping. Structural lumber and other unpainted or non-pressure-treated wood is ground to become playground mulch or fuel for industrial boilers and kilns.
“If (the companies who use boilers) were not getting it from us, they would have to clear-cut trees to get it,” Morris says.
Brick, block, mortar and cement are crushed into an aggregate and sold to local contractors for building pad or temporary driveway material.
Normally, trash from house construction sites is hauled to private or municipal waste facilities and emptied into landfills. For the builder and the homeowner, construction site recycling makes sense in terms of convenience and building green. There’s no extra effort by the builder to sort or separate trash — everything goes in a single roll-off container as if it were going straight to the landfill. Plus, using the service earns 6 points toward a home’s green score on the National Association of Home Builders green home building guidelines and meets Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) building criteria.
Although the labor needed for sorting does cost WCA a bit more than conventional trash disposal, Morris says the company chooses to absorb those costs because of the long-term benefit. North Carolina laws make it difficult to develop new landfills, so managing existing sites, allowing longer use, is important.
“There will always be material that can’t be recycled. The material we keep out now can add 12 to 15 years to the lifespan of the landfill, so the benefit to us is being able to accept material for a longer period of time,” Morris says.
Lisa W. Grigg can be reached at 887-2656, ext. 209, or by e-mail at lgrigg@news-record.com.
