E – 1161 Guidelines for Construction and Demolition Debris and Recycling

Any company involved with building-construction, demolition, or renovation creates construction and demolition (C&D) debris. This debris can consist of three types of waste: (1) inert or nonhazardous waste; (2) hazardous waste as regulated by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA); and (3) items that contain hazardous components that might be regulated by some states. This course describes the required procedures to be followed when generating, storing, transporting, or disposing of hazardous waste. Often the best way to deal with the waste is to keep it out of landfills by reducing its volume, reusing it, and recycling it, and the course provides guidelines on how this can best be done. Several successful case studies of recycling demolition materials are presented.

This course is based on a compilation of four EPA Green Building documents: “RCRA in Focus: Construction,” “Demolition, and Renovation,” “Recover Your Resources,” “Using Recycled Industrial Materials in Buildings,” and “Recycling at Automotive Site Spurs Revitalization.”