C&D News

USA Biomass Corp., Bell Gardens, Calif., has entered into an agreement with Waste Management to transport and process about 10,000 tons per week of green waste and paper in Orange County, Calif.

The agreement calls for USA Biomass to transport material from Waste Management’s Sunset Environmental transfer station in Irvine, Calif., to various Los Angeles area recycling locations and landfills. A five-year contract is expected to be entered, with two optional five-year extensions available.

USA Biomass estimates this contract could generate an additional $1.5 million in annual revenues. USA Biomass has agreed to purchase certain Waste Management assets as part of the  deal, including 19 tractor-trailer transport  vehicles.

USA Biomass CEO Fred Behrens says the deal “fits ideally into our  overall  operational plan.”

NADC WHITE PAPER QUESTIONS DECONSTRUCTION

The National Association of Demolition Contractors (NADC), Doylestown, Pa., has released a report questioning the value of deconstruction, defined as the labor-intensive disassembly of some structures in order to recover timber, boards or other materials.

 “A renewed interest in hand demolition, often coupled with social programs to provide entry-level job training for high-risk individuals, is sometimes called ‘deconstruction,’ and is often promoted as an alternative to demolition,” the report notes. Such methods “typically take two to ten times longer than demolition efforts,” the report continues. “Building owners, developers, or public officials faced with the need to comply with tight timelines, meet stringent financing schedules or deal with difficult security issues are likely to find that many projects do not have the flexibility to accommodate a deconstruction alternative.”

The 16-page NADC report is entitled “Demolition . . . The First Step of Reconstruction,” and is based on research conducted by Gershman, Brickner & Bratton Inc., Fairfax, Va.

Regarding materials recovery and recycling, the report acknowledges that “for any project, the level of recovery hypothetically achievable is usually far greater than owners can afford, either in cost or time.” The report’s authors cite a deconstruction project that took place at Fort Ord, Calif., as determining that “total recovery achieved was 90%, but that a level of 75% could have been achieved at half the cost, and likely on a much shorter timeline.”

The NADC report notes that deconstruction could play a larger role in the future—if buildings are designed to be easily deconstructed.  “Design  for deconstruction is a concept that can  help  standardize industry practices . . . and dramatically  increase recovery  rates for interior renovations as well as structural removal.”