Architecture Commons^™

Can Public Construction And Demolition Data Describe Trends In Building Material Recycling? Observations From Philadelphia, Kimberlee Marcellus-Zamora, Patricia Gallagher, Sabrina Spatari

College of Architecture and the Built Environment Faculty Papers

There is a significant amount of waste generated during construction and demolition (C&D) activities, but few data to understand the sources, age, spatial origin, and its fate following entry into the waste management system. With few public records that track C&D waste flows, we turned to industry and Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) to quantify C&D data and meta-data using material flow analysis (MFA). LEED databases are not normally used to build life cycle inventories or material flow accounts because they do not house sufficiently detailed data. We propose using the geo-referenced data on reused C&D waste in …