Study: Nantucket Could Salvage 4,500 Tons Of Construction Waste Annually

Nantucket could salvage and reuse more than 4,500 tons of building materials each year generated by the island’s construction and demolition activity, according to a new study by a Boston-based consulting company, though questions remain about the feasibility of the company’s recommendations. The study, funded by ReMain Nantucket, recommends the construction of a staffed warehouse to hold salvaged materials and an increase in trained workers with the skills to deconstruct buildings.

Currently, Nantucket primarily demolishes unwanted buildings and ships the refuse off-island, rather than deconstructing them and reusing the parts. According to EBP, the company behind the study, 17,000 tons of waste are shipped off-island each year. Materials to build new houses are shipped over from the mainland.

Since the production and shipping of new materials and demolition waste releases greenhouse gasses, EBP argues that reusing 4,500 tons of materials each year would reduce greenhouse gas emissions by the same amount as taking 869 cars off the road, though some believe that this estimate does not consider every factor.

A salvage program as proposed by EBP would also support historic preservation. “It’s like organ donation,” said Mary Bergman, executive director of Nantucket Preservation Trust, a non-profit dedicated to historic preservation advocacy and education. Nantucket Preservation Trust was involved with coordinating EBP's study. “Nantucket has a history of reuse...a lot of structures around the island have these stories of ‘the doors came from this house, the timber came from this house’.”

Bergman believes that salvage is an essential part of historic preservation, especially in the face of climate change. As sea levels rise, the only way to save many historically significant parts of houses will be to salvage them.

But limited by a lack of storage space and inefficient resale markets that operate primarily through Facebook, Nantucket’s construction and demolition workforce is currently unable to salvage many of these materials. A warehouse could solve these problems, but any attempt to complete such a project would face significant obstacles.

“I think it’s going to be challenging to get a piece of land and to fill the roles it will take to do it at the level they are projecting,” said Andy Buccino, a home energy rater and consultant who has worked in the building industry for 25 years, including 12 years as a general contractor. “The cost is extremely prohibitive.” Buccino praised the idea conceptually but raised several concerns also outlined in the study.

According to EBP, even a small salvage facility usually requires 5,000-6,000 square feet, and large facilities can be as big as 25,000 square feet. EBP concedes that something of that size isn’t realistic on Nantucket given the cost of land on the island, but local builders they spoke to suggested a smaller, more financially viable facility could still be effective.

Another hurdle would be the lack of skilled deconstruction workers. Using MIT’s living wage calculator, EBP estimated that workers would need to be paid around $20 an hour, but Buccino thinks that guess is conservative.

“You can make as much working at Stop & Shop,” he said. “You’re not going to get skilled hands that can reasonably deconstruct a building for under $25 [an hour], and it’s really more like $35 because it's challenging work. To demolish a building, you just need someone who can take it apart. To deconstruct a building, you need someone who knows how to build the building in the first place.”

He pointed out that in some cases, construction laborers are getting paid well over $30 on Nantucket and would have no incentive to switch to a much lower-paying job. Buccino argued that the Town should instead improve the existing online resell markets and take a more holistic approach to sustainable development.

“You have to have a plan to get housing, to pay your workers a competitive wage,” Bergman agreed. She emphasized that the second phase of the study will focus on how Nantucket can implement EBP’s recommendations and indicated they are pursuing several ideas about how to ensure that land can be paid for and the workers can be adequately compensated. One option that the study suggested was to use money from fees levied by the Town on building demolitions or waste dumping.

Whatever the solution is, Bergman stressed that Nantucket has to do something.

“We have to think about the long term of what it means to be a sustainable community,” she said.

“What sort of sacrifices are we willing to make? In order to be a more resilient community, how are we willing to come together to reduce the amount of waste that we are generating?