The first week of November we had a great experience exhibiting at the Greenbuild conference in Los Angeles. We were in good company with CDRA members; Tommy Carts, Armstrong, Malarkey Roofing Products, GAF, Certainteed and Cemex who also had booths on the floor. We engaged, not only with contractors and people on the front lines of construction, but also municipalities working to establish recycling programs in their communities. It was a great group of people who asked a lot of good questions about recovery, material processing and recycling rates. For those seeking a way to find recyclers for their projects we were able to show them our Find a Recycler tool on our website that lists all of our recycling members in the U.S. and Canada. 

If you are not familiar with Greenbuild, it is a conference hosted by the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) and provides a platform for sustainable construction, design and operation. USGBC is also the founder and administrator of the LEED certification program. One of the ways projects, working to obtain LEED certification, can gain points is by diverting building materials instead of landfilling them. We had a lot of interaction with conference attendees on a quest to learn more about the construction and demolition recycling industry.  

One of the USGBC staff members stated that there was more talk about recovery and recycling at the conference than ever before. The primary reason for this was the rollout of LEED v5, the newest version of the LEED certification program that requires material to go to a certified facility if you want to receive anything more than a 35% recovery rate. This will be a big adjustment, not only for contractors, but for recyclers as the need to certify their recovery numbers increases. Note, that the only certification program that USGBC will accept without question is from the Recycling Certification Institute (RCI). We had a lot of questions about this and we were glad that Stephen Bantillo from RCI spent time at our booth and answered questions for attendees.

 Thank you to all of the CDRA members who came by to see us and spend some time with us. It is always great to see everyone. I would also like to give a special thank you to Terry Weaver from USA Gypsum who helped us to set up the booth and spent time educating people about all of the fantastic things we are doing here at the CDRA.