Zero waste plan
Posted on Sep 1st, 2009 by Doug Marsh VP, CR, CAPS, GBP | 0 Comments
I attended a new Austin Energy Green Builder seminar last Friday on the City of Austin's adoption of a Zero Waste Master plan. The UN Urban Environmental Accord's goal of reducing, by 20%, the per capita solid waste disposal to landfills by 2012 and zero waste by 2040 is driving the direction of the City's efforts. Reduction of solid waste is also inherently tied to climate change since the anaerobic decomposition of waste in a landfill produces methane (which is far more potent than carbon dioxide), disposal by incineration releases carbon dioxide, as does burning of fuel for transportation of waste to disposal sites. This is very informative to me since I was usually only focused on our wasteful practices as a society not on Green House Gases as a, not so obvious, detrimental result of solid waste.
A major requirement of Green Building is diversion of demolished materials and construction waste out of the landfill. There are a few companies that now offer single stream containers that we are finding indispensable for our waste management programs for our remodeling projects. On larger projects we start with a 30 yard dumpster and fill it with all the recyclable materials: ducting, old hot water heaters, toilets, furnaces, shingles. After that we use the same box into which all the materials for the whole project go since from that point on all these items can be recycled. The single stream container solves the site space problem on city lots where separate containers of efficient size are not feasible. As the project moves past drywall and the waste amount lessens we switch to 8' x 8' x 4' plywood boxes. This site built container holds the smaller volume slowed down flow: all of which is recyclable.
To read the full City Master waste plan go to http://www.ci.austin.tx.us/sws/0waste.htm
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