Vancouver\u2019s plastic bag ban<\/a> \u2014 about 30 per cent of Canada\u2019s plastic waste comes from construction, renovation, and demolition.<\/p>\n\u201cConstruction and demolition [waste], it\u2019s just invisible to the average person,\u201d said Gil Yaron, Light House\u2019s managing director of circular innovation, which is why he thinks it hasn\u2019t been a focus of waste-reduction efforts.<\/p>\n
\u201cInstead of plastic bags, we\u2019re talking about other forms of packaging in the commercial context. But it\u2019s all the same idea \u2014 single use. And it\u2019s massive in scale, it\u2019s just insane in terms of the volume of material.\u201d<\/p>\n
Yaron said most construction waste management systems are \u201cprimitive.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s usually one bin on a construction site. Everything goes into it, and it gets dumped at a landfill,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
He added it can be challenging to get contractors to participate in waste diversion because they say they don\u2019t have enough space on their site for a recycling bin, as well as that they\u2019re worried about the time it takes to train crews.<\/p>\n
Another challenge Light House found is that while Metro Vancouver has the capacity to process plastics, many companies think that plastic waste from construction isn\u2019t clean. They also don\u2019t have a ready supply of it, since plastic collection at construction sites isn\u2019t standardized.<\/p>\n
What did the pilot project do?<\/p>\n
Light House worked with the construction companies on projects like the PNE Amphitheatre, Holdom Overpass, and Steveston Community Centre. A priority of the project was to ensure that it was either revenue-neutral or revenue-positive, so that companies wouldn\u2019t have additional fees.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s just redirecting where things go,\u201d Yaron said. \u201cThe contractor on the construction site [is] still paying the hauling fee and a tipping fee to get rid of the material. It\u2019s just instead of it going to a landfill, now it\u2019s going to a company that\u2019s taking it and processing it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Despite the concerns around space, it turned out that the sites had enough room for an extra bin. And while the training component on the front end took some additional time, waste separation didn\u2019t require any more time once crews picked it up.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn fact, we got a lot of feedback, saying that the crews really took pride in the work, knowing that these materials were actually going to be diverted,\u201d Yaron said.<\/p>\n
They then took this plastic waste, baled it, shredded it, and turned it into a pellet. Plascon Plastics, a Delta-based company, then took it and produced InfinaNet, a product that can reduce concrete volume by up to 30 per cent.<\/p>\n
What\u2019s next?<\/p>\n
At first, Yaron said it was challenging to find companies to participate. But by the end of the project, he said they had many contractors approach them and ask what was happening next.<\/p>\n
While the Construction Plastics Initiative has come to a close, Light House is looking at creating a second phase of the project that would expand across multiple cities over a longer time frame.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe timeframe wasn\u2019t long enough to cover the full lifespan of a project. Construction projects take years, and this project was only 14 months.\u201d<\/p>\n
In the meantime, Yaron hopes it will bring more attention to construction waste.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s actually much easier to collect and manage materials off construction sites than it is from residential applications, because there\u2019s a very finite number of projects, and each of them generates large volumes of material,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A recent project in Metro Vancouver diverted 38,000 kilograms of construction plastic from landfills in just over a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":599576,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194298],"tags":[49,48,55],"class_list":["post-599575","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-vancouver","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-vancouver"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/599575","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=599575"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/599575\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/599576"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=599575"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=599575"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=599575"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}