ABSTRACT
Noted sustainability authority Paul Hawken points out that nearly all production and distribution business models entirely ignore associated environmental burdens when calculating acquisition prices for goods and services; further, purchase prices rarely reflect true costs of the aftermath when remnants are disposed of, most often by landfilling. Does the current price of construction account for the damage inflicted on the environment through materials production, construction activities, and ultimately the disposal of facilities when their service life is exhausted? What are these ignored impacts and how does one begin to define and account for them? This paper acquaints the audience with the life-cycle consequences of generating and landfilling construction and demolition debris, and the benefits of salvaging, reusing, and recycling construction materials. The United States Army continuously upgrades it's infrastructure to meet current mission requirements. Wood framed barracks complexes constructed in World War II are being removed. Concrete and masonry complexes built during the Cold War are being replaced by contemporary facilities. In so doing, enormous quantities of debris materials are generated. These include wood, concrete, metals, asphalt materials, fibrous materials, masonry and other construction materials. Efforts to divert construction and demolition debris from landfills, and to recycle these materials for construction applications are described. By examining available Life Cycle Assessment data, a first approximation of the value of these recovered materials is presented; however, their value is expressed in terms of the reduction in burdens to the natural environment by virtue of the process. This information provides a piece of the sustainability puzzle, which is the determination of the “true costs” of goods and services which must incorporate the value of that part of the environment which was used to create the product.
