Kent Porter can sometimes tell how long a company has occupied an office just by looking at its ceiling tiles: The greater the sag, the more likely the riser space in the ceiling contains decades' worth of abandoned telecommunications wiring.
“There is a labour cost to pull it out and a cost to dispose of it, so people just never pulled it out … If there is a very large tenant that has been around for a long time, they could have five or six systems of legacy within the ceiling space,” said Mr. Porter, vice-president of Rycom Telecom Property Management Inc. in Toronto.
Rycom got into the recycling business a few years ago when fire codes outlawed abandoned cable but, rather than dumping it, the company found a recycler that is able to recover close to 100 per cent of the materials – from the copper wiring to plastics and lead in the sheathing.
“A lot of people pull out cable and ship it to landfill. We realized that, in today's environment, you can't do that,” Mr. Porter said.
He estimates that there may be six billion feet of abandoned cable behind office walls and ceilings across the country. But that's a drop in the bucket compared with the large volume of construction, renovation and demolition (CRD) waste going to landfill every year. A number of municipalities and provinces are looking at ways to improve CRD waste diversion.
Statistics Canada data show 4,173,338 tonnes of CRD waste (both residential and non-residential) was sent to landfill or incineration in 2006. Much less was diverted: Only 746,728 tonnes of material was prepared for recycling by construction and demolition sites, according to Statscan.
Natural Resources Canada estimates that wood, by weight, represented about 26 per cent of the CRD generated in 2006, followed by paper (14 per cent), asphalt roofing (12 per cent), drywall (10 per cent), concrete and metals (9 per cent each), asphalt pavement (5 per cent) and brick (3 per cent).
Other materials, such as glass, insulation, plastics and items that are contaminated or difficult to sort, represent 12 per cent of CRD waste going to landfill, said Michael Clapham, senior policy adviser for recycling at Natural Resources Canada.
Waste management initiatives and regulations vary widely, but more municipalities and provinces seem to be heading for zero-waste targets, said Thomas Mueller, president and chief executive officer of the Canada Green Building Council, which administers the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) rating system.
“What seems to be emerging is that waste diversion targets used to be 50 per cent. The sights are set higher now and, while we don't see uniform action across the country yet, I would say that zero waste, just like carbon neutral, is a target we see emerging around waste generation and disposal,” Mr. Mueller said.
Ontario has embraced a zero-waste target and is updating its Waste Diversion Act. Alberta is looking at implementing province-wide standards for construction and demolition waste management as a way to significantly reduce its solid waste per capita.
Both provinces are considering a deposit/refund system whereby builders and demolition companies would have to file a waste management and diversion plan as well as pay a deposit at the building-demolition-permit stage. They would receive a full or part refund depending on whether the diversion goals were met.
“There is an opportunity here for industry to realize their role in waste diversion and learn how they may be able to save money as a result of being better at waste diversion,” said Jo-Anne St. Godard, executive director of the Recycling Council of Ontario.
