Used construction materials on Vancouver Island are finding second homes, thanks to a new initiative.
In August, Vancouver-based non-profit Light House launched a free program called the Building Material Exchange (BMEx), which serves as a bridge between contractors with surplus materials and those who can reuse them.
“We ... meet with companies and basically do a mini waste audit to determine what waste they’re producing and then we will meet with other companies to identify what their needs are and then we match them up,” said Gil Yaron, Light House’s managing director of circular innovation.
Though the initiative is less than six months old, it has already fostered a handful of pairs.
“In one case, we connected a demolition company in Victoria with a private company in Vancouver that was looking for bricks to do an interior fit-out of their new corporate offices,” said Yaron.
ReWood – a volunteer-led initiative in Victoria – is using lumber from construction sites to make greenhouses and planter boxes for farmers, agricultural associations and community gardens, and Chemainus-based modular home manufacturer NEXUS Modular Solutions supplied wasted wood and metal to a designer for a multimedia art project.
Connections like these help further the non-profit's goal of diverting reusable construction waste – including concrete, aggregate, wood, drywall and metals – from landfills.
“There’s a huge amount of valuable material that is going to waste,” said Yaron. “From an economic perspective, we’re throwing perfectly good material away.”
According to the Capital Regional District’s 2022 waste composition survey, 172,886 tonnes of material was thrown out in Hartland Landfill in 2021, and 13.3 per cent of that was non-wood construction and demolition waste.
“There’s a cost to expand and ultimately close and monitor landfills over time, and those come out of taxpayer dollars and/or tipping fees,” added Yaron.
In Victoria alone, salvaging and repurposing materials from demotion sites has the potential to divert 3,000 tonnes of waste from the dump every year, the city said on its website.
So, why are construction companies throwing out reusable materials in the first place?
“Contractors are under pressure to build quickly, and they can’t tolerate things that disrupt their building schedule,” said the managing director. “And so, making changes to the way they manage waste – they see it as a potential risk in terms of impacting their schedules.”
Cost is a concern, too.
“It currently costs less for a company to throw much of this material away than it would to divert it,” added Yaron.
Reusing materials has implications beyond reducing landfill waste.
Responsible for making and maintaining structures people rely on, from single-family homes to skyscrapers, the building and construction sector accounts for 37 per cent of the world's greenhouse gas emissions, according to the UN Environment Programme.
A chunk of those emissions result from the production of building materials – referred to in the industry as embodied carbon.
"Embodied carbon emissions are the emissions that come from building materials as they are extracted, processed, manufactured, transported, distributed and disposed of," said the Environmental and Energy Study Institute on its website.
According to the Washington, D.C.-based organization, reusing materials could reduce embodied carbon emissions.
In January, Light House plans to make it even easier for companies to do just that, with the launch of a platform similar to Facebook Marketplace.
“Companies can post materials and other companies can either procure them or receive them as a donation – whatever arrangement they want to make,” said Yaron.
Also, in Nanaimo, the organization is working with Habitat for Humanity – a non-profit that helps build homes for families in need – to construct a hub where contractors can drop off excess or salvaged materials for buyers to procure. The facility is slated to open early in 2025.
To date, 100 companies in the building world have registered with the program, according to Yaron. Light House is reaching out to over 300 general contractors on the Island and over 900 companies that are part of the building-material value chain.
To learn more about BMEx, visit: light-house.org/bmex.
