Construction waste accounts for almost half of what goes the landfill.
According to the EPA up to 40% of what goes into landfills is construction waste. A 2,000 square foot home produces almost 8,000 pounds of construction waste. That is a staggering amount of garbage.
If you dissect what goes into a dumpster on a job site you will find that by weight or volume, wood, drywall and cardboard make up 60 – 80% of that waste. Two of these three major components of construction waste can be recycled or reused.
Take a look at the dumpster the next time you are on a construction site. You will probably find yourself thinking “I could almost build another house with the stuff in here”. The sad fact is this is close to the truth.
Waste reduction is a basic and overlooked element in most construction.
In my experience proper planning can keep cardboard and wood out of the waste stream. At Form & Forest our design and manufacturing process is very tightly integrated. That means we are able to plan for reduced construction waste from the very beginning.
Our first cabins will be available this spring and they are being planned for efficient use of materials and waste reduction, all the way from the initial architectural design through to the manufacturing process.
This is important not only because it conserves resources, but also because it saves you money. Good construction waste management will save you money because you have less to haul away, and more importantly you don’t pay for material you don’t need.
In traditional site based construction most of the waste comes from framing errors, and weather. Typically a builder will overestimate the amount of wood they need to account for this. This extra wood is not only expensive to dispose of it is also expensive to buy in first place.
When you build a cabin using our factory built framing components you don’t lose materials due to warping and weathering. You don’t have to worry about costly framing errors either, because we can manage quality control better on the factory floor than we can on the job site.
During the design process D’Arcy Jones and I have been working together very carefully to ensure that we can build his cabin plans as efficiently as possible. We run everything through a program that allows us to make the most efficient use of our materials. When you decide to build a cabin from Form & Forest we already know precisely how much material to order.
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One of the overlooked causes of both happiness and misery is the quality of our environment. The walls, chairs, buildings, and streets that surround us have a profound effect on the way we think, feel, and act.