A majority of stadiums send out the same message when they are taken down: rubble, a couple of impressive implosion videos, and a bit fuller landfill. That's not how the Minneapolis Metrodome was torn down, and it's not just for a headline. According to an April 17, 2014, joint announcement from the Minnesota Sports Facilities Authority and Mortenson Construction, the demolition of the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome was completed a month early in April 2014, and over 80 percent of the stadium was not sent to a landfill. Of the 80,000 tons of concrete and 4,500 tons of structural steel removed from the wreckage, it was sent for recycling to be used in new construction projects, and precious metals were trundled away from the old seats, as were cast iron and even roof cables. That's a rather unusual retirement plan for a 32-year-old air-supported dome that was home to one Super Bowl and two World Series.
The Metrodome's unglamorous afterlife
People consider games, crowd noise, and perhaps a few viral Vikings collapses when thinking about a stadium's legacy. No one is going to make a film on where the rebar ended up. However, the Metrodome's teardown quietly became one of the more efficient large-scale deconstruction processes in recent American sports history, precisely because the demolition contractor, Frattalone Companies, sorted recycling materials rather than dumping them in a dumpster. All of the material was removed from the stadium in 4,910 truckloads. The steel and concrete didn't go straight from the wrecking site into the new stadium's foundation, though, it was first hauled to off-site recycling yards, like AMG Alliance's facility across the river, where it was sorted, crushed, and processed before some of it was eventually reused, including in construction of the Metrodome's successor, U.S. Bank Stadium.
America's much bigger, much less flattering waste problem
This is where the feel-good part of the story ends. A recycled stadium is a good headline. It's not by itself proof that America has gotten the hang of demolition waste. This U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) report on construction and demolition materials estimates that more than 600 million tons of construction and demolition debris are produced annually, more than double that of regular household trash (municipal solid waste).
