With the mounting concerns for environmentally safe practices in the commercial building industry, one of the biggest challenges that conventional construction increasingly faces is excess waste and lack of innovative practices to minimize and recycle it.
According to the statistics from the US Office of Solid Waste, Building-related construction and demolition (C&D) debris totals approximately 160 million tons per year, accounting for nearly 26 percent of total non-industrial waste generation in the U.S.
Sources of the building-related C&D debris waste-stream include demolition (accounting for approximately 48 percent of the waste stream per year), renovation (44 percent), and new construction (8 percent). (Source: http://www.epa.gov/greenbuilding/pubs/gbstats.pdf PDF file) This astounding amount of waste can in great part be attributed to the fact that architects and builders do not design commercial and residential structures with an easy re-purposing or deconstruction in mind.
However, in recent years modular construction industry has emerged as a pioneer in successfully employing a completely different approach to waste management- one that saves money and helps our environment.