Have you ever thought about how construction that goes on everyday on our planet as well as the demolition that goes on affects our planet and our environment?
Well let’s put it into simple statistics and facts to make it easy to understand how very much these things do affect our planet.
For example, there are many different and various sorted materials that are made into products which are then recycled multiple times.
These materials produce the conservation benefits and savings. This can be called a true diversion as materials moving away from landfills may then be repeatedly recycled.
There are some landfills in the country with the resources in their facility to process demolition debris materials very quickly. Some of these landfills’ facilities are able to process demolition debris materials at the rate of 135 tons every hour.
And did you know that the processed materials as well as the sorted materials that are recovered are then sold to different and various markets? These processed materials that are sold to different markets are then usually used to make a range of products which are made with recovered materials.
Many people think and many people assume that plastics and paper and even glass are responsible for the majority of our landfills and environmental issues. This is not always the case, in fact between 25 and 30 percent of the United States’ annual municipal solid waste is from home construction and remodeling projects as well as much of it is due to demolition projects associated with these construction projects.
To make something comparable to the average 2,200 square foot home the project would require at least 13,000 board feet of framing lumber. Additionally, to construct this same average 2,200 square foot home the framing lumber used would reach 2.5 miles.
There are 1.2 million new construction homes built every year in the United States. If the lumber used to construct these 1.2 million new construction homes was laid touching end to end the line of dimensional lumber would stretch more than 3 million miles. 3 million miles would also get you to the moon and back.
Not to the moon and back once. Not to the moon and back twice. But there would be enough dimensional lumber to get you to the moon and back six times. Clearly something needs to be done about new construction, remodeling and demolition because of the major negative effects the results are having on the planet Earth.
