ME 310A

Mission 7: Benchmarking Review

Team Volvo CE with BTH
Project Prompt: In any city today, constructing a new
building usually involves deconstructing an old one. Instead
of carting all the debris to a land fill, one should reprocess
and reuse as much material as possible onsite. Regulatory
and economic pressures are both pushing this trend. How
can Volvo move into this sector of the industry?
Exploration Goals: We identified the following areas for further exploration during our
benchmarking process and split them up between the Stanford and BTH teams:

Urban Infill Planning

Demolition Recycling
Electronics Recycling
Other forms of Urban Mining

Experiences: We visited the following places during our Benchmarking process:

Recology San Francisco, CA

Building Resources San Francisco, CA

o Talked to owner Matthew Levesque and tour facility

TransformUrban LLC San Francisco, CA

o Conversation with owner Naomi Porat (visiting next week)

Dckia, Sweden
o Visiting Svensk dcktervinning AB next week

Electronics Recycling Plant in Sweden

Physical Benchmarking
o Catalogs and recycled tiles and glass from
Building Resources
o Electronics recycling kit from Verizon
o 2x4 with nails

Current Deconstruction Methods:

Cherry Picking

Interior Salvage

Metals Salvage

Deconstruction
(sorting on site)

Trucking from
site

Composition of Construction
and Demolition Waste

Other: 11.9%
Ceramics/Tile/Glass

Plastics: 0.5%

Can be tumbled and used as landscape

alternatives or for art purposes
Window glass is not melted down to
make new windows due to manufacturing
complications

Stone

Labor intensive to repurpose

If can be removed, it is easily reused

Cardboard/Paper: 2.7%

Wood: 27.4%
Metal: 8.8%

Steel is 90% recycled

Aluminum is highly recycled due to
environmental impact of
manufacturing
Copper is stripped from construction
sites for high value (~85%)
Metal is easily sorted at sorting
facilities

Lots of business use reclaimed wood

for various applications
De-nailed dimensional lumber is
highly prized but de-nailing is time
and labor intensive

Roofing: 12%
Aggregates: 23.3%

Drywall: 13.4%

Can be used as fertilizer

Can be remade into new gypsum drywall

Concrete is the most recycled

material by volume and weight
Asphalt is recycled for roads
Aggregates can be recycled or
reused as filler material