By Molly Cox, Residential Green Building Committee
The Residential Green Building Committee met on October 3rd, 2016. We heard from speaker Emily Fabel from RecyclingWorks, a statewide initiative in MA funded by MassDEP, to encourage reuse of Construction and Demolition (C&D) materials.
RecyclingWorks wants to funnel all the best practices for reuse and recycling in the state to one centralized resource, making it easy for users. Their mission can be broken down into a couple major objectives, first focusing on reuse, along with on-site separation which saves money and time before materials go on to their end locations. They connect with key stakeholders such as contractors, architects, building inspectors, and local entities to see what can be salvaged and try to attract certain audiences, like homeowners or commercial customers, to appeal to. For example, they partner with Boston Buildings Resources as an outlet to resell materials.
Matthew St. Onge and Paul Kiefer from Boston Buildings Resources presented to us, and spoke further about their work as a non-profit. They accept materials people no longer have a use for which can be dropped off at their location, or picked up on site. Materials are then inventoried and assigned monetary value for reselling. Boston Buildings Resources also teaches “hands on” workshops so people can adopt a Do-It-Yourself lifestyle. Their location is open to anyone on Monday-Saturday for anyone who wants to shop around.
We were very excited to have Emily at the Committee meeting, and RecyclingWorks has some events coming up, so email or call for details at info@RecyclingWorksMA.com or 888-254-5525
After the presentation, we continued to talk about the upcoming building tours we are planning, and reviewed some advocacy updates from Craig.
We have a building tour coming up on November 8th at 5:30, see more details HERE. PassiveHouse MA Symposium is happening October 15th, Saturday, and our own Craig Foley will be speaking. Come join us for our next Committee meeting on November 14th!
Presentations from the event can be found here: