Orange County NC Website
1.Summary of Construction and Demolition Waste Reduction Activities in <br />Orange County 1992- 1999 <br />1992: Town of Chapel Hill enacted a Solid Waste Planning requirement as amendment to its <br />Development Ordinance. This ordinance amendment requires any developments needing a <br />special use permit or zoning compliance permit to develop a solid waste management plan that <br />states how they will manage construction waste, how they will provide for on -site storage of <br />recyclable materials and how they will consider use of building materials with recycled content. <br />The ordinance has been effective primarily in the area of requiring storage for recyclable <br />materials in the finished development. The component detailing how construction and <br />demolition wastes could be recycled and reduced lacks strong enforcement provisions but is <br />currently undergoing revisions. Information on building materials with recycled content is <br />regularly provided to builders, but there has been limited opportunity to followup on their use at <br />our current staffing levels. <br />1995 —1996: Wood waste diversion. In 1995, we diverted a sample of unpainted, untreated <br />construction wood waste including both solid sawn lumber and plywood for testing. The material <br />was ground up, aged, mixed with yard waste and tested for heavy metals and volatile organic <br />compounds. The stormwater runoff was also sampled. The results of testing showed no heavy <br />metals or volatile organic compounds present in the wood samples. The State DENR ruled that, <br />in order to accept plywood or other engineered wood in the yard waste grinding program, we <br />would have to receive a special permit for composting at the landfill. There was speculation that <br />the material would not gain market acceptance as the yard waste had due to the presence of <br />recognizable chunks of plywood and long splinters of lumber. The project was terminated in <br />1997. <br />Marketing studies for wood waste were conducted in 1995 -6 and again in 1998. The second <br />round of market study identified several opportunities for wood waste diversion through <br />contractors and industrial use. Further wood market work is required to ensure that any <br />construction lumber diverted from landfilling is productively reused, composted, or recycled. <br />That work will occur this year. <br />November, 1995: Landfill and local governments enacted a ban on landfilling <br />non - residential corrugated cardboard. (implemented March, 1996) This ban, actually a penalty <br />equal to twice the tipping fee, has resulted in an almost complete elimination of the landfilling of <br />corrugated cardboard in the construction and demolition waste landfill. Cardboard that is included <br />in loads of construction and demolition waste delivered to the landfill can, to avoid the double tip <br />fee penalty, be diverted to dumpsters dedicated to recycling cardboard that we have located on the <br />landfill site. A 1999 amendment to the ban increasing the double tipping fee penalty by $400 for <br />large loads containing over 50% corrugated cardboard further decreased the volume of cardboard <br />disposed by a small group of violators. <br />0 <br />