An analysis of environmental and fiscal impacts of recycling during Kern Center construction

During construction of the Milwaukee School of Engineering's (MSOE) Kern Center, a fivestory, 210,000 square-foot state-of-the-art athletic, health and wellness facility, 785 tons or an estimated 7,500 cubic yards, of waste materials were sent to a landfill rather than recycled, because of space constraints at the site. The purpose of this National Science Foundation (NSF) funded Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) project was to determine the potential for cost savings and landfill diversion if the construction management company and MSOE had been able to recycle rather than landfill these materials. Actual trash invoices were used for quantities of construction waste. Average Wisconsin construction waste composition data from WasteCap Wisconsin, Inc., an environmental organization which has managed construction waste on many local construction projects, was used to estimate the composition of Kern Center waste materials. The composition assumed for this project was wood 28%, concrete/masonry 14%, drywall 13%, cardboard 8%, metal 8%, trash 28% and 4% reused. Assuming that it would have been possible to recycle 75% of the construction waste, it is estimated that between $19,400 and $25,800 could have been saved and over 590 tons or 5,800 cubic yards of waste materials diverted from local Wisconsin landfills. Based on this analysis, if issues with site constraints could have been resolved, we concluded that it would have been cost-effective to recycle construction waste during this project.