You've probably noticed piles of construction waste, too — but not for long - The Seattle Times

You’ve probably noticed piles of construction waste, too - but not for long | The Seattle Times

Editor’s note: Pacific NW magazine’s weekly Backstory provides a behind-the-scenes glimpse of the writer’s process or an extra tidbit that accompanies our cover story. This week’s cover story dives into Seattle and King County initiatives that are building a better approach to construction waste.

LIKE MUCH OF what I like to write about, this week’s cover story on the enormous amount of waste generated by the construction industry was born out of my own curiosity.

I live in West Seattle, where a lot of houses have been torn down in the last few years. At the end of my block, a nice old rambler vanished while I was out of town for a couple of days. When I got back, the lot was bare. The next week, three two-story structures were going up.

When I pass a house being demolished or under construction, I like to climb up and peer into the dumpsters — after the crews are gone for the day — to see what they’re throwing away. Sometimes I grab some wood for my backyard firepit.

So it was fascinating to find out what happens to that mangled mixture of lumber, insulation, packaging and Sheetrock. One expert I spoke with told me he wishes everybody could visit a C&D (construction and demolition) debris waste-processing facility, like those run by DTG Recycle, to grasp the enormity of the issue.

I visited two — in Snohomish and Tacoma — and the sheer volume of material at both blew me away.

Another sight I won’t forget is a rail yard in Sodo, just south of Costco.

Material that can’t be recycled at facilities such as DTG’s, and debris straight from many major demolition and construction sites, is loaded into rails cars for disposal.

Photographer Ellen M. Banner and I were getting a tour of C&D waste sites from King County staff, and we pulled off near the Fourth Avenue South Bridge to look down on the Argo rail yard.

Containers crammed with waste were stacked three high in places. Others were already sitting on rail cars, stretching into the distance. Their destinations are the landfills near the Columbia River in Washington and Oregon where most of the Puget Sound area’s garbage is dumped.

Out of sight — and mostly out of mind.