Councilmember Vernikov questions Anderson on construction material reuse policies

But alas, I will now turn it over to Councilmember Vernikov.

Thank you very much, Chair.

Really great points, both my colleagues.

And I would just add, Commissioner, to the couple of solutions you mentioned, just greater enforcement and fines.

We have this issue in the district all the time.

But other than that, I really want to thank the Department of Sanitation for being so great and wonderful.

A couple questions I have.

Number one, just two questions.

What policies could encourage developers and contractors to reuse materials rather than dispose of them?

Absolutely.

That's a great question and something that in our draft solid waste management plan, which we hope to finalize very shortly, we've started to dig into.

And we're doing a lot of work right now with the Economic Development Corporation around those kinds of deconstruction rather than demolition incentives.

And I'll let Jen speak to the details there.

Yes, thank you.

As the Commissioner mentioned, this swamp is the first time we're really shining a light on this material stream.

In addition, the Council has included in their upcoming waste characterization law the requirement for characterizing the waste stream for this sector.

And we think that will be really informative as far as developing programs and policies, as you mentioned, to target specific material types that have the highest value in recovery as part of the theme of this hearing.

Preliminarily, we're seeing things including asphalt, concrete.

Perhaps even glass from construction and demolition as materials that can be sort of most easily circulated

and reused within our infrastructure here in the city because the technology exists, the companies exist that do this work and find ways to close those loops.

We are continuing to engage both with EDC, as the commissioner mentioned, as well as the mayor's office of management and budget.

We have put together a workshop this fall where all the capital construction agencies will be convening to take a closer look at many of these opportunities.

And we hope that that workshop will, as part of our SWAMP implementation, inform specific programs and policies that we should adopt to increase the recovery of these materials.

Okay, thank you.