Recycling Industry Growing as Building Materials Find New Markets

Entire Buildings now Heading for Reuse

Rising materials prices and high disposal costs are part of the reason jobsite recycling is becoming more popular.

By Heather Larson

Local contractors know they can save money and resources on construction projects by recycling jobsite waste.

"Crunch, munch, bunch, load and haul doesn't save money anymore," said Jeanne Staton, owner of Staton Cos. in Eugene, a company that specializes in the demolition of large structures. "Sorting and recycling does, it's ultimately better for the environment to reuse source materials or find other alternatives to dumping the debris in landfills."

Staton said her company recycles on every job as much as it can.

Recycling often has to be factored into a bid proposal. When bidding on a project to demolish the Senator House block in Salem a few years back, Staton proposed to recycle 90 percent of the materials. It actually recycled 95 percent.

"We had a huge thermostat (like charities use) showing how much we recycled everyday," Staton said. "When we gave away the bricks from the building, housewives drove up in station wagons and loaded them up. Later we sold the salvage materials offsite."

Staton's company frequently demolishes lumber mills and sells the old-growth timber from the mills. Often the timber is used for high-end home construction to give the homes a rustic look.

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Primate House recycled

The primate house at Woodland Park Zoo in Seattle lost its usefulness years ago.

It was dismantled and salvaged last year by Meridian Excavation and Wrecking in Seattle. Metal parts of the primate house were separated onsite, and everything that could be salvaged was.

"We always try to recycle and reuse everything we can," said Jim Maxwell, manager of capital improvement projects at the zoo. "Even when we repave, we send the asphalt out to be ground up and reused."

Destruction of the primate house made way for the Young Children's Environmental Learning Center. The center, geared toward children 8 and under, is expected to open in the spring of 2006.

Port of Tacoma recycles Landmark site

The Port of Tacoma is currently in the process of recycling a pair of 11-story Aluminum domes that have long been a landmark on the Tacoma Tideflats, near downtown Tacoma.

The domes, built in 1966, protected raw alumina ore from inclement weather before it was converted to aluminum at Kaiser Aluminum Corp. smelter.

The smelter closed in 2000 and last year the Port bought it and auctioned off 6,000 tons of alumina ore that still remained in the domes. This past summer the Port auctioned off smelter equipment, cranes, conveyers and the domes.

Barry Oliver of Chinook Ventures Inc. in Victoria, BC, bought the dome structures for $14,000. He plans to dismantle them, transport them to British Columbia, and reassemble them as storage units for lime.

The removal of the domes will free up 10 acres of land at Terminal 7 that Yang Ming Marine Transport Corp. is set to lease.

Kaiser Aluminum plant dismantled

In Spokane another Kaiser shutdown has resulted in a huge recycling project. St. Louis-based Commercial Development Co. bought Kaiser Chemical Corp.'s former Mead Works smelter in bankruptcy court, and all the plant's assets are being sold.

"We are currently dismantling the pot lines and going through the Environmental Protection Agency so that everything is carefully disposed of," said Randy Jostes, director of acquisitions at CDC. "A project this large hasn't been done in the state of Washington before."

The copper and aluminum recovered from this project will be sold on the commodity market. Jostes said the demand is high for these metals if the size is right and they are free of contaminants.

There's much more than just copper and aluminum to salvage at the site. An estimated 64,000 tons of steel, as well as thousands of tons of raw materials such as calcined petroleum coke and pallets filled with unused insulating bricks, copper rods and crushed anode butts, are due to be sold.

Recycling Organizations in Washington
Recycling Organizations in Oregon