Deconstruction Leads to Green

by Christine Hunt

It's one thing to build something in a green way. It's entirely another thing to un-build something in a green way.

Truckloads of construction debris - lumber, drywall, masonry and cardboard - are hauled to landfills every day. Some is waste from new construction sites, and some is the jumbled remains of demolished buildings. About 40% of everything in a landfill is from buildings. The U.S. Green Building Council estimates nationally that nearly 3 pounds per person of building materials is covered over each day.

Much of the material could be recycled through deconstruction.

Deconstruction is the process of carefully dismantling buildings by hand in the reverse order it was built and salvaging all suitable materials for reuse. Deconstruction can take up to three weeks, sometimes nearly 10 times longer than a typical demolition. The length of a project varies from building to building. Some buildings are soft-stripped; the deconstruction team recovers only what is easily removable, trim, plumbing, windows, oak floors and cabinets, then the shell is demolished by conventional demolition methods.