Vermont District Finds C&D Recycling Affordable

The Chittenden (Vermont) Solid Waste District has reported that it neither saved money nor spent extra during a recent renovation project that focused on recycling construction material, according to a report in the Burlington Free Press (Burlington, Vt.).

Over the winter, the district had a contractor add four offices to its administration building, replace the roof and update the building’s interior. The project cost about $170,000.

According to the report, as an experiment, the district instructed the contractor to sort and recycle as much as possible. The contractor recycled about 23 percent of what would usually be thrown away, and he reported that other projects could yield a higher recycling rate. The large amount of discarded asphalt roofing shingles were difficult to recycle on the renovation project, according to the report.

According to the report, the contractor found no real cost difference in recycling.