Proportion of construction and demolition waste from Multi-Unit Residential Buildings by type, Kaia Nielsen-Roine, 2023

Vancouver has a construction and demolition (C&D) waste problem. We produce about 1.7 million tons of C&D waste every year and of that, 31% is wood waste. Given that about 57% of new buildings in Vancouver are light-wood type buildings, the city needs a strategy to reduce the demands for new wood in new constructions. This project presents a method to recycle salvaged wood from deconstructed light-wood buildings and use those materials in new deconstructable assemblies. Common wood waste such as dimensional lumber, plywood, oriented strand board (OSB), laminated strand lumber (LSL), and laminated veneer lumber(LVL) can be recycled into new wood products including finger-jointed lumber, OSB/LSL or Plywood/LVL Crosslam tiles, and wood fibre insulation. These materials can, in turn, be used in construction assemblies that are designed for deconstruction so that all materials and components can be reused or recycled using the proposed recycling technology. This research creates a framework that would help reduce the construction industry’s reliance on new wood material and promote circular reuse and recycling of wood products rather than wasting or downcycling wood to biomass or waste-to-energy fuel. It would also extend the useable lifespan of the wood beyond a single generation of buildings to as many as seven generations of buildings; that allows for as many as 500 years of use compared to the 30-70 years of a typical building in Canada. This goal of this research is to help build viable pathways to a circular economy in BC’s building industry so that we might save resources, carbon emissions, and money by taking full advantage of the materials already present in our buildings. This website is intended to serve as a collection point for this research as we move towards making these technologies a reality.

The initial part of this research was completed through the UBC SALA Master of Architecture Graduate Project program, this website comprises excerpts and images from that thesis.  To read and download the full thesis please go to Use it Up, Wear it Out by Kaia Nielsen-Roine.