on the cover / By Cynthia Gilmer

Constructing Solutions

Green building advotes talk trashca

(Jan. 25, 2007)  Making a building is a loud undertaking. Drills whine and hammers strike up an odd beat, quickening at the end of each sequence to drive the nails flush. Compressors kick, their motors changing pitch. The low light of a gray day is just enough to illuminate the dust. Finishing time at the emerging store - the new Eureka Natural Foods building on Broadway - calls for lifts to lengthen the reach of men installing large lighting fixtures. The final touches of many hands brush over the building.

Across the room, a forklift is prepared to lower another load from upstairs. Intermittently, near posts and walls, bags of trash, or not, aren’t very full. The can for lunchtime trash is obvious, with to-go cups spilling over. Afraid to look up or down I only barely trust the professionals to see me safely through this danger zone. Carefully, I navigate my path through the room’s center to avoid any tools, scraps or sharp objects over my head.

Organic House Construction’s Paul Bias at work on a new home. Photo by Cynthia Gilmer.

GALLERY >

I came to scavenge the trash, to uncover how the output flows from this new construction site. Looking around, a pile of wood on a pallet is the centerpiece of the empty floor. At this site, Pacific Builders uses a bag and pile system. For small debris, clear bags hold recycling and black bags are for garbage. In the lot, piles of concrete, wood and steel await recycling. Inside the fence, alongside the superintendent’s trailer, building supplies are scattered into piles.

“Things are pretty well-maintained, recycling wise,” says job superintendent Chris Carlotti of Pacific Builders. “It’s an ongoing process to keep everyone up to speed.” He’s down for it, though. He thinks it’s great that their scraps find a home instead of going to a landfill.

His assistant, Darl Miller, says, “When it first started it was hard, but now we know.”

Construction workers aren’t famous for recycling. The only “green” they are typically after is their paycheck. But the trend is shifting nationally. Some local industry professionals figured that out, and the paychecks are fattening up, too.

This recycling effort is part of a larger movement. Green building is a new buzz word in the industry, but soon will become a standard. In 1989, the state of California passed the Integrated Waste Management Act (Assembly Bill 939). This legislation required all jurisdictions to divert half of their solid waste by the year 2000. Arcata made its numbers in 2003, but Eureka lags with a 35 percent diversion rate. We’re doing all right locally, but the California Integrated Waste Management Board recently targeted construction and demolition waste as a portion of the waste stream that needs attention. They want municipalities to have a program.

Construction and demolition waste accounts for nearly a quarter of the waste stream. Steve Salzman, a project manager with the Eureka engineering firm Winzler & Kelly, says that 2.8 pounds of construction and demolition waste is produced per person every day. Louise Jeffery, project manager for the Humboldt County Waste Management Authority, estimates that there is a little over 100,000 tons of construction and demolition debris produced in the county annually.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 NEXT PAGE >SHARE