When lumber is salvaged or reused for your remodel or other construction buildings, we can end up saving roughly 33 mature trees and 10 acres of pine trees.
Oftentimes, when a remodel is started, one of the big surprises encountered is the amount of debris and scrap accumulated each day. Big or small, a remodel requires different types of building materials including wood, metal, sheetrock, concrete, asphalt, bricks, cardboard, and hard plastics. Not only can you reuse much of these materials within your own remodel, but what you don't use, you can donate for reuse or recycle somewhere else.
Did you know that arrangements can be made with your contractor ahead of time to haul concrete to recycling plants, which then ground it down into gravel or base rock for future building projects? Or that unpainted wood can be ground down and mixed in with soil to help nourish plants and tree roots? Pallets, fluorescent tubes, cardboard, and paper packaging, along with those architectural drawings, can all be recycled.
When lumber is salvaged or reused for your remodel or other construction buildings, approximately every three square feet can become one square foot of structure. At this rate, contractors could recover enough wood to build 120,000 new affordable homes annually, saving 33 mature trees and 10 acres of pine, about as many trees as would fit in seven football fields. It really is something to think about.
What other types of items can you renew, reuse, or recy...
Read the full article in the CalFinder Remodeling and Home Solar Power Magazine
