Greetings reuse fans,
As we cap off our Earth Month celebration here at CJ on Arbor Day, it seems appropriate to talk about wood waste. This week, we had other reasons to celebrate as CJ made significant progress moving our deconstruction partnership with the City of Pittsburgh forward.
Earlier this week, we hosted a training with three of the City’s approved demolition contractors and CJ staff led by Jeff Carroll from Baltimore and CEO of Urban Wood Economy to orient the team on how to maximize reuse using a combination of hand labor and heavy machinery. Jeff supervised the deconstruction of 600 Baltimore row houses as part of an award winning social enterprise project called Details Deconstruction. CJ is looking to repurpose more brick and structural lumber through our warehouse inspired by Detail’s successful model.
Nationally, 18 million tons of wood waste comes from Cities with only 3 million tons getting recycled. In 2019, 9690 tons of brick was generated from demolition activities in Pittsburgh, most was landfilled or crushed and used for backfill; that same year, 2,820 tons of wood waste was generated. The pilot project will help us get an idea of how much of that wood and brick “waste” could be retrieved for reuse.
Landfilling wood generates methane, a powerful green house. It traps far more heat than CO2, but it does not remain in the atmosphere as long. Keeping wood out of the landfill and intact as a product also sequesters carbon—which means it keeps carbon “locked up” and not contributing to greenhouse gas emissions. In addition, as we have said before, reuse creates more jobs and because this material is local its carbon footprint is lower—generating far lower CO2 emissions related to shipping materials long distances. We will also be able to tell you which Pittsburgh neighborhood the wood and brick are coming from!
I thought Arbor Day would be an appropriate time to update everyone on this project.