Georgians aim to reduce construction waste by reusing materials – WABE

This reporting is made possible by a partnership between WABE and Grista non-profit environmental media organization.

At Re:Purpose Savannah’s warehouse on the east side of the coastal city, staff and volunteers were recently unloading wood panels from a pickup truck, reglazing old windows and using a metal detector to find and remove nails from reclaimed wood.

“The materials come from the historic buildings that we lovingly deconstruct,” explains Jordan Lynch, the organization’s salvage manager. “We salvage every piece that doesn’t have insect damage, dry rot or water damage.”

By means of breaking down instead of demolish buildings, they keep everything that can be reused, instead of sending it to a landfill to decompose. That’s important, because as materials break down in landfills, they release emissions that contribute to climate change.

The most recent data from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency from 2018 shows that construction and demolition produces more than twice as much waste as municipal waste.

Organizations like Re:Purpose are trying to address this problem. So is the Lifecycle Building Center in Atlanta, which also does deconstruction and accepts donated materials for reuse.

“It’s kind of silly to throw away things that are still useful for a long time,” said Shannon Goodman, CEO of Lifecycle. “We just need better systems and processes to collect and redistribute those materials.”

According to Goodman, better data is a step toward improving the system.

Her organization is working with a national group called Build Reuse, which recently received a $6 million federal grant from the Inflation Reduction Act to track and report data from reuse programs. It will help create scorecards that show all the energy and resources that go into making materials.

“It helps someone who is selecting materials for their next project to understand what the sustainability characteristics of that product are?” Goodman said.

The idea is that consumers can directly compare the amount of energy and CO2 emissions required to produce new wood, cladding or lighting fixtures, and the amount of reuse of existing materials.

“It’s absolutely revolutionary,” Goodman said.

The hope is that individual consumers and even large developers can make more efficient and sustainable decisions by quantifying reuse, making deconstruction easier, and making recycled materials more widely available.

In addition to sustainability, reuse can also help preserve the past – both man-made and natural.

The Atlanta Wood Foundation keeps fallen and cut trees in the Atlanta area out of wood chippers and landfills. Instead, they are milled and kiln dried, creating unique wood panels that can be used for furniture and other projects.

“These trees can live on as a new, beautiful dining table,” said Kelly Syed, director of administration for the Atlanta Wood Foundation. “That wood will outlast all of us if it’s taken care of. People can pass it on to their children and grandchildren.”

She said milling the donated trees means they sometimes end up with rare or unusual wood that can’t be found in most lumber yards. The foundation has processed sassafras and deodar cedar. Syed said a woodworker would have a hard time finding either type of wood elsewhere.

Re:Purpose and Lifecycle also often use materials that are not available in modern DIY stores.

The Re:Purpose warehouse is filled with lumber made from old-growth longleaf pines, which grew in much of Georgia before they were cut down and replaced with faster-growing pines used for modern lumber. People restoring old buildings in Savannah can often find exactly the old materials they need, says Yolanda Morris, marketing manager for Re:Purpose.

“We have people come in here with a piece of three-inch trim and say, ‘I need to match this to the existing trim in my house,’” she said. “I’m like, ‘Sure, we got it.’ We’re able to make those dreams come true, which is always gratifying to see.”

Because so many of the buildings in Savannah are historic structures built with beautiful old materials, there needs to be an alternative to throwing all that stuff away when a building is demolished, Morris said.

“A part of Savannah’s history keeps disappearing,” she said.

By reusing those old materials, they keep history alive, Morris says.