Huntsville Mayor Tommy Battle recently teased that the official city bird of Huntsville had become the crane, due to the number of building cranes seen throughout the city, but as the construction industry continues to grow, demolition work too is expected to grow at a rate of 3.3% through 2022 according to the demolition experts at Big Rentz.
The City of Huntsville just razed downtown’s Municipal Parking Garage A to make way for the new City Hall and its adjoining parking garage, but what to do with all that crumpled steel and pulverized concrete?
Recycle it, of course!
Dump truck loads of broken concrete and twisted metal have been taken to the Solid Waste Disposal Authority (SWDA) of Huntsville. There, the concrete can be reused to build roads, driveways and footpaths.
“We’re recycling the concrete material,” said Ricky Wilkinson, director of General Services for the City of Huntsville. “It will be crushed and can be used as base material for temporary roads or anywhere you might use gravel.”
Recycling building materials is quite common, not to mention being environmentally friendly since it will not take up space in a landfill. The recycling process has been made easier according to Wilkinson due to improvements in the recycling process, better concrete-busting equipment and the economics involved.
Metals like steel, aluminum and copper can be melted down and reformed into new metal products and sold for scrap. Rebar and guardrails from the garage can be melted down at a recycling center in Birmingham to be reused for several future applications and may have in fact been melted down before and reused for the garage.
Brandon Tucker, project executive for City Hall contractor Turner Construction Company, said most structural steel is recycled.
“That’s how most metal producers in the U.S. develop their products,” he said. “Rebar in concrete may have been a car part that was melted down and used again. The steel quality is as good or better than virgin steel because it must meet so many strength requirements.”
Construction on the new City Hall should go vertical in May or June with a finish date of 2024, but every time you drive a new road or watch the cranes place a shiny new steel beam on a new structure across town, take a moment to realize it just may have come from the remains of an old demolished downtown Huntsville garage!
Don’t miss out! Subscribe to our email newsletter to have all our smart stories delivered to your inbox.
