Net Positive Waste

The Net Positive Waste imperative solves the problem of extensive waste by reusing salvaged waste materials in the building process. As The National Association of Home Builders estimated, “8,000 pounds of waste material get sent to the landfill when building a single 2,000 square foot stick-built home” on average for each large building project. All of that waste material is then sent to landfills, which are mostly made up of items that cannot break down very quickly. Those materials sit in landfills for years creating large amounts of toxins and greenhouse gases that are released into the environment. This all ultimately leads to habitat damage and contributes to global warming. All building projects under LBC must strive to reduce production waste during construction, operation, and end of life.

In the Hive, we strive to use as many upcycled items as possible, as well as using new declare certified materials in our building process. In order to keep track of what materials are upcycled or fit the declare criteria, we created a spreadsheet of each material that is being used on the site. For the upcycled materials, the imperative states that we must include one per 500 sq meters of area, totaling in around 33 salvaged materials on our site. In order to complete this we are getting a majority of our wood from the trees that were knocked down during the tornado. We will use this wood to create our planter boxes, some seating, and tables. As well as the salvaged wood, we are doing many donation drives for members of the community to donate furniture, and other useful items that they will no longer be using. This will divert all of that waste from ending up in landfills, which is another restriction in the imperative. The final restriction in Net Positive waste is that we must provide dedicated infrastructure for the collection of recyclables and food scraps. We plan to do this by providing our high school with a new compost system. All of the material collected in those compost bins will be used as fertilizer for the garden and other plants on our site.