Worth it: Building demolition and reuse
Today's guest blog is authored by Suz Okie of GreenBiz Group. The original post can be read here.
Back in 2016, my grandmother’s charming, but outdated 1941-built home was being torn down. Making way for the modern trappings of new construction, its demolition — while distressing to my family — was not an uncommon fate.
Hundreds of thousands of homes in the U.S. are demolished each year, and building demolition accounts for more than 90 percent of the 600 million tons of construction-related waste generated in the country each year — a volume projected to balloon to 2.2 billion tons globally by 2025.
Considering my profession, it won’t shock you that I found discarding the materials that comprised my grandmother’s house — my mother’s childhood home — unappealing.…