In 2021, UMass Chan dismantled part of its First Road garage for a new research building; 8,445 tons of steel and concrete were reclaimed, 99% by weight

The typical demolition narrative goes something like this: a building is torn down, a dumpster collects the debris, and it's shipped off to a landfill, which is hidden from view. However, that is not how the story goes in Worcester, MA, where UMass Chan Medical School began building a new research facility by dismantling part of its First Road parking garage in 2021. According to UMass Chan Medical School’s Office of Sustainability, crews recovered 165 tons of steel and 8,280 tons of concrete from the garage deconstruction, 8,445 tons in total, or 99% of all material removed by weight, diverted from landfill and set aside for processing into new building materials used across the region, rather than the more common approach of putting it in a landfill. This is a genuinely rare piece of good climate news. But it's also a convenient opportunity to raise a larger, more cumbersome question: why does the rest of the country still send so much of what it tears down to a landfill?

The demolition problem nobody talks about

It's difficult to believe that few people ever mention that buildings are by far the largest waste stream in the country. In fact, EPA data estimate that the United States generated just over 600 million tons of construction and demolition (C&D) debris in 2018, more than twice the roughly 292 million tons of municipal solid waste (household trash) generated that same year, according to the EPA's own figures.

A portion of that material is re-used. Some of the concrete is crushed into aggregate, and steel is well known to be recyclable. However, a significant portion of it has been disposed of in landfills. A big part of the problem is that the country lacks consistent data on where C&D debris actually ends up. The EPA's national tonnage estimates, including the 600-million-ton figure above, rely on a "materials flow analysis" methodology first developed by Cochran and Townsend in a 2010 peer-reviewed study titled “Estimating construction and demolition debris generation using a materials flow analysis approach,” published in the journal Waste Management. That study built a method for estimating how much C&D debris is generated nationally; it did not attempt to track, state by state, how much of that debris is ultimately reused, recycled, or landfilled. That distinction matters: while national generation estimates exist, comprehensive data on the eventual fate of that material, reuse versus recycling versus disposal, remains far patchier, which is part of why a project like UMass Chan's stands out as an exception rather than the norm.

Why this should matter

Here's how a parking garage in Worcester will relate to your life, even if you've never been to Massachusetts. Each time a building rises to new heights, it brings what is known as "embodied carbon," the carbon emissions that are embedded in the construction of steel, cement, and concrete, and the transportation of those materials to the site before the first light is switched on. The production of concrete and steel is carbon-intensive when made from scratch.

According to a 2023 report from RMI and the U.S. Green Building Council, reuse, recycling, and circularity in the building-material chain offer a measurable way to reduce emissions from the building sector and are informing the development of LEED v5, the next generation of USGBC's green building standard. Cutting the amount of new concrete and steel a project needs isn't just a good line for a university newsletter; it's one of the most feasible tools the built environment has to cut its carbon footprint, at a time when younger Americans consistently rank among the generations most concerned about climate change.

What UMass Chan's project does and doesn't show

None of this should be read as a triumph for the construction industry as a whole. The 99% reclamation rate is impressive, but it is not typical of demolition projects, which is exactly why it made the newsletter instead of being routine. It's worth being precise about what happened, too: the 165 tons of steel and 8,280 tons of concrete were reclaimed from the garage deconstruction and set aside for processing into building materials for projects across the region, not poured or welded directly back into the new research building on site. (Separately, the roughly 52,000 tons of bedrock excavated for the new building's foundation was hauled off and crushed into gravel for other infrastructure projects, a related but distinct part of the site's material story.) That kind of outcome is achievable, but it's also more expensive and logistically demanding than sending debris to a landfill, which is why it isn't yet the default.