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May 2, 2007

Located at www.BoneyardNW.com, Bone Yard N.W. is a B2B marketplace that offers the ability to buy and sell salvaged construction materials that have been taken out of a building during its renovation or demolition.

Some of the materials available on the B2B platform include valuable items such as windows, doors, flooring and even soil that would normally end up in a landfill somewhere.

On any given year, approximately twenty percent of all waste created in the Portland Oregon area is construction waste.

With the high percentage of construction salvaging going into the waste stream, BoneYardNW wants to help the construction and demolition industry increase the quantity of building materials that are recycled and reused.

The City of Portland wants the region to achieve a state-mandated recycling rate of 64 percent in less than two years from now. Currently, the regional recycling rate stands at only 59 percent.

The increased popularity of green buildings in the Northwest has renewed a growing interest in demolition and salvage operations, as opposed to the disposal of construction materials.

This allows buildings to be taken down in much the same way it was built, piece-by-piece, preserving the usable materials that can then be resold.

The preservation and recycling of building materials is called salvage. One of the benefits of using salvaged materials is that they help projects earn a certification under the U.S. Green Building Council’s LEED system.

The City of Portland hopes to divert 10,000 tons of reusable building materials from being thrown away through the use of the BoneyardNW B2B trading portal and other similar services available to building contractors, developers and others in the commercial building industry.

A recent study of recycling companies among construction and demolition contractors showed that some of them were recycling materials such as wood, metal and cardboard. However, construction companies often lacked current information about the opportunities for reuse, recycling and the sale of salvaged materials.

Portland hopes to jumpstart usable building materials with BoneyardNW. For more information, visit www.metro-region.org.

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Source: EDC Mag