Sunday night, over 10 million people will watch the ABC EM:HE Buffalo Episode documenting the makeover of Delores Powell’s West Side house. We’re excited because at least a little bit of the spotlight will be on the part we played, the Green Demolition of Delores’s old house in only fifteen hours. This spotlight is the recognition of more than just the transformation of one house, or one neighborhood–it’s a spotlight on the hard work and can-do attitude that Buffalo lives every day.
For us, Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, the Buffalo Edition, is the culmination of over two years of hard work, ingenuity, and determination. When we started Buffalo ReUse in the Fall of 2006 we did so with the belief that a demolition alternative that reclaims materials, creates jobs, and protects the environment would be great for Buffalo and great for our community. Although it seemed like a great idea, we weren’t convinced it would work– largely because of the low costs of disposal and the high costs of initiating a new start-up contracting company with very little available capital.
One thing these last two years has taught us is that tenacious attention to reducing costs and increasing efficiency is critical to our long term sustainability. Our mindset and techniques have evolved over time to ensure that we could continue to sustain our effort financially, save materials that otherwise would have been destroyed and dumped, and prove a concept that can advance the Building Re-use industry.
A lot of people have asked, “How much material do you actually save from each house?” The answer is, “Every house is different.” The Powell House was an excellent candidate for reuse because it had a significant quantity of antique rough-sawn lumber, hardwood flooring, doors and molding, cabinetry and hardware, brick and even cut stone. The wood components also came apart cleanly and easily. The sum of these materials was great and almost everything that could be saved, was saved during Extreme Makeover, largely because of the enormous human energy that was available and on hand during the 15 hour effort.
Here’s where things get a bit technical–Despite the tremendous effort, our 93% diversion rate that was recorded and explained in great detail by WasteCap, can easily be misinterpreted. From our perspective, we try to gauge our effectiveness by comparing how much was diverted from the landfill–reclaimed for future use. We measure what would have otherwise been thrown away. However, the green building industry has a different approach and attempts to quantify the total recycling and reuse percentage. A closer look reveals that, in fact, their monitoring is largely skewed towards recycling.
93% diversion means that 93 tons out of every 100 tons of material were recycled or reused. Now, if you think about it, that includes the foundation floor, which was concrete and xx tons, the stone that was an additional xx tons, and even clean fill (dirt) that was removed to expand the foot print of the foundation. Certainly, whether this house was demolished or deconstructed, these materials would have been recycled. Concrete recycling has been the industry norm for decades and there’s always a need for clean fill on development projects in practically every city, at any given time. After all, who would pay $25 – $100 ton to dump concrete or soil in a landfill, when it can be dumped for free at a concrete recycling yard or a construction site? Once you remove those tonnages, you can get down to the gnitty gritty of how effective the reuse effort really was.
We’ve learned that we can reliably divert 25 – 40% of a residential building, by weight, from the landfill–that’s what we mean by Green Demolition. On the surface, that rate may not seem terribly significant; however, that material often represents over $10,000 in material value, significant tax savings for our clients, and a reliable source of high quality materials to enable our future efforts.
While we are able to save a lot of materials, we must still throw some away. People are surprised to learn we rarely reclaim any 2×4’s from our demolition projects. The reason for this is that walls require a significant labor investment–to harvest a handful of 2×4’s that have a very low value–we can’t spend even fifty cents worth of labor on an item that sells for $1.25. This labor investment greatly increases the cost of the project, without significantly increasing the value of the materials reclaimed. Consequently, we’ve focused on harvesting the materials with the greatest value: 
interior elements, rafters, floor joists, brick, stone, and windows. By being selective about what we make the effort to save; we are able to complete projects faster; and move on to more projects to reclaim more valuable material. So at the end of the day, our percentage of materials reclaimed per project is less, but, since we deconstruct more houses in any given period, we reclaim significantly more material.
The reality of the situation is that the building reuse industry is young and just beginning to crawl. While the many efforts of the BMRA (Building Materials ReUse Association) are consistent and admirable, there’s a tremendous need for advocacy work, policy support, and recycling research to really develop and expand the industry. Efforts in the reuse industry can be further advanced through more research and development into the use of recycled materials such as roofing shingles, drywall, plaster, wood waste, and vinyl products. We need more people in the country engaged in building reuse, so that we can share our learning and techniques to improve the entire industry overall.
Finally, we need policy support to ensure that recycling and reuse is a larger priority for the entire country. One of our greatest challenges remains that it is just too cheap and easy to throw things away. There’s no economic incentive for businesses, governments, and even homeowners to embrace recycling and reuse in a significant way. Buffalo ReUse is doing its best to innovate techniques to enable the reuse of the largest quantity of materials possible, but we need a lot of players at the table to ensure that the reuse industry grows and expands in the coming years. Our collective efforts will create the new status quo for demolition that creates jobs locally, channels money into local economies, and protects the environment.
We initially agreed to support the Extreme Makeover project because we believed it was a tremendous opportunity to showcase the advances that have been made in the industry and demonstrate to the world the potential that exists for green demolition and reuse. Through this episode, Green Demolition has been put on the map! Now we need your help to grow and expand the effort, so it can be scaled and expanded throughout the country to support the green jobs movement and protection of our environment in a time of widescale global warming. We invite you to get involved. Become a member of Buffalo ReUse and the BMRA and share your expertise, ideas, and energy.
