The typical demolition narrative goes something like this: a building is torn down, a dumpster collects the debris, and it's shipped off to a landfill, which is hidden from view. However, that is not how the story goes in Worcester, MA, where UMass Chan Medical School began building a new research facility by dismantling part of its First Road parking garage in 2021. According to UMass Chan Medical School’s Office of Sustainability, crews recovered 165 tons of steel and 8,280 tons of concrete from the garage deconstruction, 8,445 tons in total, or 99% of all material removed by weight, diverted from landfill and set aside for processing into new building materials used across the region, rather than the more common approach of putting it in a landfill. This is a genuinely rare piece of good climate news. But it's also a convenient opportunity to raise a larger, more cumbersome question: why does the rest of the country still send so much of what it tears down to a landfill?
The demolition problem nobody talks about
