What Can Be Recycled From My Home Construction Project?

Building a new environmentally friendly home is an exciting step towards living a more sustainable life. Opportunities to decrease energy consumption and environmental impact while building with beautiful reclaimed wood are abundant, but what are your plans for recycling demolition materials and excess building supplies?

Recycling of construction and demolition materials (C&D) is just as important, if not more so, in decreasing your family’s long-term environmental impact. So, before you start building, meet with your construction team and your municipality recycling department to create an actionable plan for recycling waste.

Learn more about reducing home construction waste >>

Avoid Adding to Landfills

Unless you take the proper steps to prevent it, your unused and wasted C&D materials will go straight to landfills, contributing to the tons and tons of waste that could have been salvaged for reuse.

The first step in sustainable home construction should be to create a plan and on-site recycling system for sorting and disposing of C&D waste. Contact your local municipality to learn what can be sustainably recycled and repurposed in your community.

If your home construction project involves the demolition of existing structures, don’t just knock it all down! Deconstruction or a “soft tear down” will empower you to recover and sort materials for recycling and reuse. While it may add an extra day or two to the overall project, you might uncover things like doors that can be refinished for interior doors in your new home or stone that could be repurposed into a beautiful and historical entryway. 

Having recycling bins at the ready will make recycling on-site a whole lot easier.

Best Practice for On-Site Recycling:

• Clearly label bins
• Cover bins to protect materials from damage
• Lock bins to avoid theft and accidents

Your local recycling center can help you order and deliver recycling bins.