Construction Waste Recycling: What and How?

Did you know that a lot of construction waste can be reused or recycled into useful products? While the specifics of what’s accepted and how it’s recycled will vary by region, we’ve collected a few examples of the possibilities for you here.

Recycling Items

• Lumber and wood products: If they’re clean but not in good enough shape for reuse, these can be turned into mulch or biomass fuel.
• Metals: Whether from wires or other sources, metals are a highly valuable resource for recycling and get smelted and converted into new metal products.
• Cardboard and paper: These get ground up and turned back into pulp, then made into other paper products depending on the quality of the fiber.
• Plastic: Depending on available facilities, most plastics are recyclable and will get turned into new polymer products.
• Fibreglass insulation: While this is tricky to recycle, it can be used in cement creation. Cement needs a lot of silicon, which is found in fibreglass; it can also be used as fuel to power the manufacturing of cement.
• Glass: Glass is usually either crushed, or melted down. If melted, it gets turned back into new high-quality glass products.
• Wire: Depending on the wire, the metal in it may be copper, aluminum, or silver. Equipment for wire recycling varies, but it all strips the wire of any insulation and separates it out. If the wire isn’t stripped, it’ll be ground into small particles and then separated out from plastic insulation using an electromagnetic current. Metal is a valuable and highly recyclable product.

As technology improves, more materials are becoming recyclable. Seeking out recycled materials for your building or renovation product helps to bolster the market for recycling. Remember, recycling is a business, and it isn’t worth it to recycling companies to break down the materials given to them if they can’t sell it. Glass is a good example here: glass is very heavy and has a very low price, meaning that often it is simply used in its crushed form rather than being turned back into a new glass product. You should still recycle, but it isn’t enough on its own.

At Economy Waste, we help you recycle by offering recycle-only as well as rubble bins for rent. We deliver and pick up, and all you have to do is fill it up! Call us today at 403-888-5483 to let us help you take your waste away.