How do your promote sustainability in terms of waste and junk handling?
JunkGuys
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How do you promote sustainability in terms of waste and junk handling within your construction projects?
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On all of our projects we have a waste management plan. This is in coordination with district waste alliances that member towns belong to in VT. Some districts can accept, handle, and process items that would normally just go to a landfill such as shingles, pallets and clean lumber, scrap metal, and concrete. Sometimes it can be a hassle to train the trades to sort these items into the different containers, but once the training is in place it goes pretty good.
Yes, comprehensive planning, with log reports an analytics. It is important to log and track everything in documents these days.
It never ceases to amaze me (not in a good way) how wasteful residential construction is. Much of it could be reduced with more care and planning by the trades, but that's a tough one to manage consistently. When it's labor only like in framing, it's a massive waste. Even when they supply materials, it seems their time is worth more to them that planning and being careful.
Yes, the framing process results in tons of waste and junk materials.
I was floored at the quantity of waste with my builder. He set a 30 yard dumpster, and passerby's also contributed to it.
Other builders around here don't set a dumpster for that very reason. They use precut framing packages, so that has very minimal waste, they put the cardboard in the recycling (city picks that up weekly), they require the gypsum sub to cart away all of their waste themselves and they have a 2 -4 yard cloth bin for all other waste that is picked up with a skid steer. Seems to work well for them.
This is a perfect approach to reduce waste and value sustainability.