Con­struc­tion and Demo­li­tion (C&D) Debris, some­times described as Con­struc­tion, Demo­li­tion & Dis­as­ter (CDD) Debris, is a large waste stream that con­tains many valu­able mate­ri­als. How­ev­er, when build­ings are sim­ply demol­ished, that is a lot of waste that ends up in land­fills or (even worse) incinerators.

Many jobs can be cre­at­ed reusing and recy­cling used build­ing mate­ri­als, through what is known as decon­struc­tion – the care­ful dis­man­tling of build­ings to reduce waste, min­i­mize pol­lu­tion, and build the local economy.

Below are resources on C&D waste, decon­struc­tion, and build­ing mate­r­i­al reuse:

Reports & Gen­er­al Resources:

• Ben­e­fits of Deconstruction
• Tox­ic Haz­ardous Asso­ci­at­ed with Con­struc­tion & Demo­li­tion (C&D) Waste Incin­er­a­tion (Ener­gy Jus­tice Network)
• Build Reuse (for­mer­ly Build­ing Mate­r­i­al Reuse Association) 
  • Build ReUse Intro­duc­tion to Decon­struc­tion (Text­book)
• Insti­tute for Local Self-Reliance (ILSR) Decon­struc­tion Resources
• Sara Badi­ali and her book, Break­ing it Down: A Com­pre­hen­sive Guide to Build­ing Decon­struc­tion and Mate­r­i­al Reuse Pol­i­cy (2023)
• Build­ing Mate­r­i­al Reuse Pol­i­cy Chart
• Trea­sure in the Walls (San Anto­nio, Texas, 2021)
• Cir­cu­lar Char­lotte: Towards a Zero Waste and Inclu­sive City (Char­lotte, North Car­oli­na, 2018)
• How to start decon­struct­ing and stop demol­ish­ing your city’s build­ings (C40, 2021)
• Decon­struc­tion and Build­ing Mate­r­i­al Reuse: A Tool for Local Gov­ern­ments and Eco­nom­ic Devel­op­ment Prac­ti­tion­ers (Delta Insti­tute, 2018)
• The Eco­nom­ics of Res­i­den­tial Build­ing Decon­struc­tion in Port­land, Ore­gon (2016)
• Google: Accel­er­at­ing the Cir­cu­lar Econ­o­my Through Com­mer­cial Decon­struc­tion and Reuse (cor­po­rate policy)

States with Build­ing Mate­r­i­al Reuse / Decon­struc­tion Policies:

• Cal­i­for­nia
• Con­necti­cut
• Flori­da
• Hawaii
• Illi­nois
• Iowa
• Mass­a­chu­setts
• New Hamp­shire
• New Mex­i­co
• North Dako­ta
• Ohio
• Ore­gon
• Penn­syl­va­nia
• Rhode Island
• Ver­mont
• Wis­con­sin

Cities with Build­ing Mate­r­i­al Reuse / Decon­struc­tion Policies:

• Phoenix, Ari­zona (adap­tive reuse policy)
• Alame­da Coun­ty, Cal­i­for­nia (Bay Area)
• Chu­la Vista, California
• Con­tra Cos­ta, California
• Hay­ward, Cal­i­for­nia (Bay Area)
• Los Ange­les, California
• Marin Coun­ty, California
• Men­lo Park, California
• Palo Alto, California
• San Fran­cis­co, California
• San Mateo Coun­ty, Cal­i­for­nia (West Bay)
• NOTE: every coun­ty in Cal­i­for­nia has a C&D Recy­cling ordinance
• Hon­olu­lu, Hawaii
• Chica­go, Illinois
• Cook Coun­ty, Illinois
• Bal­ti­more City Decon­struc­tion Project (2018) (Bal­ti­more, Maryland)
• Lin­coln, Nebraska
• Orange Coun­ty, North Carolina
• Port­land, Oregon
• Pitts­burgh, Pennsylvania
• San Anto­nio, Texas
• King Coun­ty, Washington
• Madi­son, Wisconsin 
• Mil­wau­kee, Wisconsin
• Mil­wau­kee, Wisconsin
• Seat­tle, Washington

Build­ing Mate­r­i­al Reuse Businesses:

• Habi­tat for Human­i­ty “Restores” (many locations)
• Good­will (many locations)
• Urban Ore (Berke­ley, California)
• Rebuild­ing Exchange (Chica­go, Illinois)
• Blue Earth Decon­struc­tion (Chica­go, Illinois)
• Reuse Depot (May­wood, Illinois)
• Iowa Decon­struc­tion Contractors
• Sec­ond Chance (Bal­ti­more, Maryland)
• Almanac Hard­wood (for­mer­ly Brick & Board) (Bal­ti­more, Maryland)
• Black Women Build (Bal­ti­more, Maryland)
• The Load­ing Dock (Bal­ti­more, Maryland)
• House­w­erks Sal­vage (Bal­ti­more, Maryland)
• Com­mu­ni­ty Fork­lift (Hyattsville, Maryland)
• Recy­cling Works (Mass­a­chu­setts)
• Decon­struc­tion Works (New Hamp­shire, Ver­mont, West­ern Massachusetts)
• Decon­struc­tion, Inc. (Madi­son, Wisconsin)
• No Bound­aries Tiny Homes (Eau Claire, Wisconsin)
• The ReUse Peo­ple of Amer­i­ca (Mil­wau­kee, Wisconsin)

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[The fol­low­ing overview was com­piled from some of the resources above, includ­ing Trea­sure in the Walls, Decon­struc­tion & Build­ing Mate­r­i­al Reuse: A Tool for Local Gov­ern­ments & Eco­nom­ic Devel­op­ment Prac­ti­tion­ers, and Decon­struc­tion is Pol­i­cy Already Writ­ten, by Sara Badi­ali]

Benefits of Deconstruction

• Work­force development
• Eco­nom­ic dri­ver with small busi­ness start ups
• Increase mate­ri­als sal­vaged for use in the cir­cu­lar econ­o­my in reuse stores
• Min­i­mizes health impacts to tox­ins in the air, water, and soil

Eco­nom­ics

Reclaim­ing mate­ri­als affects the econ­o­my by cre­at­ing jobs, job train­ing, and mar­kets for mate­ri­als. It cuts down on the need for har­vest­ing new mate­ri­als like tim­ber, and removes the need for land­fill space. Reclaim­ing mate­ri­als reduces car­bon diox­ide and oth­er emis­sions. The ben­e­fits are often called a triple bot­tom line econ­o­my by cre­at­ing jobs, mar­kets, and sus­tain­able envi­ron­men­tal practices.

The triple bot­tom line – envi­ron­men­tal, eco­nom­ic, com­mu­ni­ty – ben­e­fits of decon­struc­tion is well doc­u­ment­ed. Accord­ing to the Delta Insti­tute, decon­struc­tion can offer sev­er­al envi­ron­men­tal, eco­nom­ic and com­mu­ni­ty ben­e­fits for com­mu­ni­ties with high vacan­cy rates and unem­ploy­ment. Those ben­e­fits include:

Envi­ron­men­tal benefits

• Reduced tox­ic dust from job sites
• Reduced heavy met­al leach­ing into soil
• Reduced waste to landfills
• Reduced con­sump­tion of vir­gin material

Eco­nom­ic benefits

• Jobs from remov­ing struc­tures via decon­struc­tion ver­sus demolition
• Jobs for the hard-to-employ
• Resale of build­ing materials
• Sale of val­ue-added products

Social ben­e­fits

• Removal of blight
• Poten­tial work­force devel­op­ment partnerships
• Poten­tial for work­force train­ing and con­trac­tor training
• Poten­tial for local reclaimed mate­ri­als to be used in restora­tion and preser­va­tion of old­er and his­toric structures.

Decon­struc­tion is an employ­ment multiplier:

The work­force poten­tial of decon­struc­tion does not end at the direct jobs on the job site. The decon­struc­tion field offers a high­er employ­ment mul­ti­pli­er than demo­li­tion. There are more indi­rect jobs that emerge relat­ed to decon­struc­tion as sal­vaged mate­ri­als are trans­port­ed off­site. These include ware­house jobs, retail and sales jobs, and val­ue-added man­u­fac­tur­ing jobs as a result of “upcy­cling” of the sal­vaged mate­ri­als. Addi­tion­al­ly, these indi­rect indus­tries pro­vide addi­tion­al work­force devel­op­ment and train­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties. The com­bined direct and indi­rect offer more induced jobs that are a result of the direct/indirect wages spent in the local economy.

HEALTH IMPACTS

Lead, as well as oth­er chem­i­cal pol­lu­tants from con­struc­tion sites, such as asbestos, crys­talline sil­i­ca, mer­cury, and arsenic, can also soak into the sur­round­ing soil. This has the poten­tial to con­t­a­m­i­nate ground­wa­ter sup­ply and drink­ing water which can cause seri­ous health issues, includ­ing can­cer, if ingest­ed. Decon­struc­tion offers a way of mit­i­gat­ing these haz­ards. Removal of build­ing parts piece by piece means haz­ardous mate­ri­als remain large­ly intact. Process­es like plan­ning to remove lead paint and denail­ing are done at a ware­house in a con­trolled envi­ron­ment, avoid­ing con­t­a­m­i­na­tion at the build­ing site. Con­tact with haz­ardous mate­ri­als occurs in build­ing removal no mat­ter what, but stud­ies show less risk for air­borne and ground seep­ing haz­ards when homes are decon­struct­ed rather than demolished.

Build­ings con­tain a lot of mate­ri­als that when pul­ver­ized and put into the envi­ron­ment, whether air, water or soil, can make peo­ple sick. On a mas­sive scale, the destruc­tion of the World Trade Tow­ers led to injury, chron­ic ill­ness and death in many peo­ple exposed to the tox­ic dust that the man­made dis­as­ter caused.

Demo­li­tion of build­ings can gen­er­ate unhealthy expo­sures for res­i­dents and work­ers. A Euro­pean study esti­mat­ed that demo­li­tions com­posed about 1/6 of the total waste stream. A major air pol­lu­tant from demo­li­tion of con­cern is par­tic­u­late mat­ter, an impor­tant cause of increased mor­tal­i­ty, lung and car­dio­vas­cu­lar dis­ease and lung can­cer. Increas­es in sil­i­ca expo­sure occur with demo­li­tion and sil­i­ca is asso­ci­at­ed with lung dis­eases like sil­i­co­sis, chron­ic obstruc­tive lung dis­ease as well as lung can­cer. As one study con­clud­ed “work­ers and bystanders are exposed to high short-term peak expo­sures for which occu­pa­tion­al stan­dards do not exist. Asbestos is a can­cer caus­ing fiber found in build­ings from roof, insu­la­tion pip­ing and floor­ing and has been doc­u­ment­ed to still be present even after abate­ment of asbestos was com­plet­ed. This is alarm­ing because it is estab­lished that asbestos caus­es mesothe­lioma which is a can­cer of the chest and abdom­i­nal lin­ings of the body and can­cer of the lung. It is a prob­a­ble cause of can­cer of the lar­ynx, and ovary. Arsenic and chromi­um, also found in demo­li­tion dust, are both asso­ci­at­ed with increased risk of lung can­cer with occu­pa­tion­al exposure.

Lead is per­haps the most wor­ri­some heavy met­al found in demo­li­tion dust. One Chica­go study found a 31-fold increase in lead dust at demo­li­tion sites. Wet­ting the site before and dur­ing demo­li­tion reduces the lead dust fall in the sur­round­ing neigh­bor­hood sig­nif­i­cant­ly but rais­es the ques­tion of what hap­pens to the lead after it is wet­ted? Lead is espe­cial­ly tox­ic to children’s brains and there is no safe lev­el. In addi­tion to lead, chem­i­cal expo­sures like bromi­nat­ed flame retar­dants (PBDE) are “for­ev­er” chem­i­cals, and health con­cerns include endocrine dis­rup­tion, neu­ro­tox­i­c­i­ty and increas­ing risk of can­cer. Both are exam­ples of neu­ro­tox­ins that poten­tial­ly by reduc­ing IQ can lead to sig­nif­i­cant life­time loss­es of income after in utero (PBDE) and child­hood (lead) expo­sure. Although bet­ter reg­u­la­tions have led to a drop in blood lead lev­els over time, demo­li­tion of old­er homes with lega­cy chem­i­cals built before reg­u­la­tions restrict­ed their use, may still be a source of this con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed and dan­ger­ous dust.

In sum­ma­ry, there are health haz­ards to work­ers and res­i­dents in the dust gen­er­at­ed by demol­ish­ing old build­ings. In addi­tion to con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed dust, there are oth­er con­cerns from demo­li­tion site waste (run off waste wet­ted down, waste tak­en to land­fills, waste burned in incin­er­a­tors). Abate­ment is only a par­tial solu­tion. Decon­struc­tion avoids many of these health hazards.