It’s Time to Think Outside the Roll-Off

When rebuilding or remodeling, most property owners don’t realize, and subsequently throw away, the valuable assets contained in the buildings they own, rather than putting those assets to work for others and for themselves.

Property owners often have significant tax-deductible “basis” in the lumber, doors, windows, cabinetry, plumbing and lighting fixtures contained in their existing homes, all of which are considered personal property and are tax-deductible when donated and reused.

When we build a new house or remodel our existing residence – we can do good things with these materials instead of just callously tossing them into landfills. by thinking outside the roll-off, we can put these personal property assets to work for others as well as ourselves.

I used to marvel at my grandfather’s ability to utilize the embodied energy in his old tools long after most people nowadays would have gone out and purchased a new rake or shovel. Not Fred! All that rake needed was a small brace and two bolts and it was good to go for another ten years!

Nowadays Fred might be considered an extreme dude, but why do we toss perfectly good lumber out? Why can’t we incorporate used lumber as blocking in new homes? Ask the powerful timber industry about their influence on policy makers.

Just think if we required that all new home construction incorporate just 10% of framing lumber from reuse sources. Maybe that’s an unrealistic percentage, but the point is we could reduce the need for cutting down trees by demanding we do more with the lumber from the trees that we cut down 30 or 90 years ago. And our landfills would be less burdened.

Why don’t we do this already? Well, there are certain things in this country we’re not very good at anymore; like conserving and reusing. Maybe the answer is simply that someone needs to come up with a better system for getting it done. Getting what done? Getting more reusable materials into the reuse stream and out of the solid waste stream.

Yes, we all know reuse happens sporadically and recycling happens more and more often, but we still throw the vast majority of our assets under a trackloader and then into our landfills. Many of us are exited about new energy efficient products for homes (me too), but the practice of demolition and/or deconstruction actually provides the single greatest opportunity, on most construction sites, to avoid waste, dramatically conserve energy consumption, and very possibly reduce project costs by putting property owner assets back to work.