Construction & Demolition (C&D) is one of the messiest industries on the planet, especially when it comes to the waste left behind. Whether communities are being built up or torn down, the bricks, concrete, wood, and piping left over can create a serious burden on the local environment. According to the EPA, over 540 million tons of debris was created by American C&D companies in 2015—the same weight as over 100 Great Pyramids of Giza!

Here are some of the major benefits created by reducing, reusing, and recycling the waste left at C&D sites.

Construction Waste is an Economic Boost

Although it may be simpler to haul the piles of waste off to a landfill and forget about them, the materials left after a demolition project can be quite valuable. Wood products are the most versatile of construction waste, as companies can recycle them into furniture and sell them, a trend that is quite popular with young homeowners. Metal and wood products can also be reused by construction companies as a cheaper material, lowering the building cost of new properties and welcoming more buyers.

Salvaging and recycling construction waste is big business, with over 230,000 jobs being created in 2007 alone to handle all of the recycled material, and many more for investment and expansion.

Building a Better Environment

The US produces a staggering amount of construction waste every year, and that waste hurts the environment in different ways over the course of its life.

The creation of construction materials, specifically steel and concrete, is an intensive process with large amounts of resources used and CO2 expelled. By leaving them in a landfill, that damaging process has been wasted and will be repeated to create replacement items.

Recycling construction waste benefits the environment by cutting down the extraction of virgin resources, as it returns the usable materials to the construction industry and limits the demand for newer products.

Landfills are also an environmentally precarious area, with many of them set to close due to overfilling. By reusing construction materials that would normally be abandoned, the burden for landfills to breakdown their contents is lessened and long-term environmental healing is made possible.

CREED LA fights to ensure that developers pay fair wages to all the hard-working construction professionals throughout the industry while simultaneously providing them with quality health care, continued training, and trustworthy retirement plans. To learn more about how our non-profit organization supports those building a better, greener world for us all, contact CREED LA online or at (877) 810-7473.