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2013wastemanagementjudges 2013wastemanagementjudges

Jul 9, 2013
06:57

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Congratulations, your proposal has been named a finalist in the Climate CoLab Waste management contest. You have until July 20th to edit your proposal. The Judges suggest that you focus your edits on the topics listed below. The goal of reducing construction waste is worthy, and the organization behind the proposal has many partners, which is certainly positive. But the proposal (and a further look at the CRI Council website) comes up short regarding specific goals and objectives regarding the technical approaches they advocate. Also, there is little acknowledgement of the considerable amount of C&D recycling that has been done in North America over the last 2 decades or discussion of interfacing with other organizations that have assisted and promoted this process. One older organization, the Construction Materials Recycling Association (CMRA or www.cdrecycling.org) has published guidelines, assists in certification programs, tracks legislation, and provides directories to find recyclers and facilities. Organizations such as Habitat for Humanity routinely set up local exchanges for both scavenged and excess building materials. These are just 2 examples, but there is no recognition of, nor mention of interfacing with, existing C&D recycling initiatives. Also, the proposal would have inspired more confidence if there had been a review of what has already been done and what's been successful and what’s not. There have been some ideas for construction recycling that have been terrible, for example, at one point, the idea of putting a thin layer of gypsum from wall board on top of landfills at the end of day was put forward as a way to use construction waste. This led to vast increases in emissions of hydrogen sulfate. At the same time, there have been some good ideas, such as recycling gypsum into new wall board. That said, the reviewers like the overall idea, it’s just important to make sure that the practices being advocated are well vetted and make sense. There is talk in the proposal about a path to zero waste. If the authors could give me an example of this from one building, that would be very helpful: what kind of waste would get generated and what would be done with it?

Renee Gratton

Jul 10, 2013
11:35

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Thank you for your comments. I certainly have taken those constructively and have made edits but also of course wanted to respond. It's important to note that while we are familiar with the organizations noted herein, and we are in fact working to support and collaborate more with Habitat for Humanity, we are more focused more on preventing consumption and production patterns that create; bring sectors together and address issues that have not been researched in depth. These groups have told us that the problem is end markets (buyers for the recycled material) and to help this, we need to get to change the mindsets of those who affect the processes. Equally importantly, most groups are focused regionally, and the CRI Council's Mission 2030 was a small idea that grew in response to interest and demand. In our Mission 2030 Reference Guide and other areas of the web site - the draft posted on the web site - we speak about our research on drywall, which is ongoing, the issues, impacts and possible solutions. Through this, we speak of what is done, cradle to cradle recycling, opportunities, and risks. Our knowledge and work on drywall is actually extremely extensive and has countless professionals involved. Our work on drywall drove us to found the CRI Council, but we are now trying to diversify, using the lessons learnt through our learner-centered research approach and help other sectors such as concrete, wood, roofing, insulation. It is absolutely critical to us that whatever we recommend is scientifically based, backed up with life cycle assessments, measurable and verifiable. We do not promote zero waste at the risk of the health and well being of our people and the planet that sustains us. This is why we are aligning ourselves with universities, research experts, other subject matter experts. I've tried to address these questions in my edits. Best regards Renee Gratton

Renee Gratton

Jul 11, 2013
09:24

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Edits did not save as expected - will have to do over again by 20th

Rob Laubacher

Jul 11, 2013
09:38

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Renee, Sorry about the technical problems--I'd suggest that you might prepare edits off line and then copy and paste them into the template. The points that you make in your comments are good ones, and you will want to incorporate them in your revised proposal. Given the time limitations the judges face, they focus their review efforts on the Description tab and often are not able to review comments in detail Best, RL For the Climate CoLab team

2013wastemanagementjudges 2013wastemanagementjudges

Jul 31, 2013
02:54

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This is a very solid idea that is somewhat too wordy for its own good. There is a lot of discussion about organizing and organizations that might actually implement waste reduction approaches to building and renovation and there are indicators of how much greenhouse gases might be reduced per unit of waste that is reused or recycled instead of going to a landfill. The proposal is linked to other well-regarded projects like Architecture 2030. Will still need to focus the proposal into a how to document, since implementation to get to the vision needs to be spelled out in more detail.

Renee Gratton

Jul 31, 2013
03:44

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How we document has been a challenging issue as the little bit of data that exists is unreliable, and while we are looking for partners on this, we have not yet reached that point. Therefore, one of the objective of targeting either leaders of willing 'laggers' to sign Mission 2030 is so that we can at a minimum work with them to build base cases in wide ranging sectors. This is an ongoing evolution which is becoming slowly but surely clearer with every gathering and project. That said, we are currently discussing with groups who can either provide the consulting services of waste planning, management and reporting, as well as others who have online tools for those who want to do this themselves. We are also getting much deeper into the benefits and challenges of chain of custody documentation, looking at independent VS extended producer's responsibility policies, environmental product declarations per ISO standards, etc. Documenting and getting to the vision will rely heavily on engaging with the right partners

Richard Turnock

Aug 11, 2013
11:32

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The facts, about what is happening, and the process description about how things are happening will not stimulate people to support, vote or get involved. You have to clearly state why you exist as an organization. Do not tell me what you know. Don't tell me how you know you are right. Tell me why you exist.

Renee Gratton

Aug 12, 2013
07:05

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The CRI Council and Mission 2030 exist for a number of reason, but the two most important reasons are: The need to better understand the issues, impacts and possible solutions of the growing industrial, commercial and institutional waste. In Canada and likely in other regions, the residential waste stream being diverted is improving, but the largest part of the main stream was decreasing in spite of regulations, increasing services, rating systems, etc. We needed to know the core reason as we cannot change what we don't know. As well, we want the zero waste goal to be met safely - and some of the increasing practices are at a high risk, or generating high life cycle impacts.

Chad Knutsen

May 1, 2016
04:41

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Very cool mate. I know I am a few years late to the party, but I wanted to introduce you to my project, since it could mesh well with yours.

Cheers,

Chad

https://www.climatecolab.org/plans/-/plans/contests/2015/buildings/c/proposal/1305704