Recycling alternatives for clean construction and demolition wood wastes

This paper describes efforts by the Orange Regional Landfill, Orange County, North Carolina, to recycle clean construction and demolition (C&D) wood wastes, including engineered wood products. The primary approach to recycling this material has been an attempt to incorporate it into the landfill's current yard waste mulching operation. The project objective is to safely and effectively combine unpainted, untreated C&D wood into the yard waste mulch currently produced and sold by the landfill. This diversion effort combined with other marketing efforts to determine if this material is acceptable for other uses and users, such as boiler fuel or particleboard manufacturers, has a potential to divert up to 5,000 tons of C&D wood wastes. Efforts since December 1995 include a test grind, two test growth plots for landscaping plants comparing the use of composted yard waste mulch and C&D wood waste mulch, and a pilot grinding and blending of C&D and engineered wood wastes for test marketing in the spring of 1997.