Diving letter:
- The city of Pittsburgh is Pursuing a building policy aims to boost the potential recovery, recycling and reuse of materials from certain doomed buildings owned by the city. Leaders say pThe main advantages of such a policy include the elimination of epidemics in the city districts, the reduction of waste sent to landfills, the promotion of climate protection goals and the opening up of opportunities for vocational training.
- Major Bill Peduto signed an executive order Last week the city was tasked with creating a process for identifying and assessing structures that may be considered for sustainable deconstruction, with a particular focus on historically black business districts and low-income communities.
- There are currently more than 1,700 doomed buildings in Pittsburgh, said Sarah Kinter, the city’s director of permits, licenses and inspections. Pittsburgh will be running a pilot urban land deconstruction this year, but also plans to establish standards for material reclamation for city-funded demolitions. The city hopes to start deconstruction projects in the fall, Kinter said.
Dive Insight:
Pittsburgh’s move to protect materials from building failure follows a similar move by executives in Portland, Oregon nearly five years ago who said they were the first city in the US to call for such a policy of deconstruction.
The Portland Ordinance began applying to homes built in 1916 or earlier. However, the city expanded the scope of the program by pushing in 2019 for the ordinance to cover homes from 1940 or earlier. A 2019 carbon and energy impact assessment of a sample of deconstructed Portland homes found that 27% of the materials were salvaged. Deconstruction had a net carbon dioxide equivalent benefit of 7.6 tons per house compared to demolition, as fewer new materials had to be made and carbon locked in reused wood.
Baltimore, Milwaukee and San Antonio have also taken steps towards deconstruction. But, by and large, the adoption of similar guidelines across the country has not exactly caught on. The potential cost of deconstruction versus demolition can be an issue. Pittsburgh’s pilot program will be an opportunity to conduct a cost analysis, Kinter said.
“We heard it both ways. We heard, ‘Hey, this is actually going to be cheaper because the weight of the materials you would send to the landfill is less so there may be savings there.’ Alternatively, you are paying for the work of deconstruction, which is labor intensive. And the argument is that it could actually be more expensive because if you pay people fair wages for this work, you will actually end up paying more, “Kinter said .
It is likely that deconstruction will cost more. “The question is how much more,” said Kinter. “And again, because not all structures are eligible for demolition, these are costs that the city is willing to pay to take a more sustainable approach to demolition. And the answer is that we are doing this because it is the right thing to do . “
The US Green Building Council (USGBC), which promotes the sustainable construction and design of buildings and created the LEED certification program, is also looking at this issue as an important part of a building’s life cycle. Elizabeth Beardsley, Senior Policy Counsel, described deconstruction as an emerging policy area.
“Pittsburgh should be commended for it,” said Beardsley. “I’m very excited that they are doing this because I think it will be great to have more examples in different cities to show what is possible.” When it comes to cities’ environmental efforts, “energy is focused on the climate, but waste is not that far behind,” she added.
These efforts are central to Pittsburgh’s Climate Change Plan, which aims to see the city cut greenhouse gas emissions by 50% from 2003 onwards from 2003. This includes a zero waste target or 100% diversion of waste from landfills by the same year. Construction and Demolition Waste (C&D) accounts for nearly 18% of the state’s municipal waste stream, according to the Pennsylvania Department of the Environment.
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