One of Seattle’s goals is to have 70 percent of all construction and demolition waste either recycled or salvaged for reuse by 2020. To achieve this goal, the following six easily recyclable materials are no longer allowed to be sent to a landfill from Seattle: asphalt paving, brick, concrete, metal, cardboard, and new gypsum scrap. This means that if any of these six materials are produced from your construction project, your options are to reuse the material, salvage it for resale, or take the material to a facility where it can be processed for recycling.
Starting July 1, 2014, all construction and demolition projects will need to comply with new construction and demolition waste requirements before we issue a permit. Seattle Public Utilities (SPU) and DPD are working together to increase recycling and salvage rates in an effort to achieve the city’s landfill diversion goals. Seattle’s current goal is to divert 70 percent of construction and demolition waste from landfills by the year 2020. Certain materials are easy to either salvage or recycle, so we now ban asphalt paving, brick, concrete, metal, cardboard, and new gypsum scrap from being sent to a landfill for disposal within the city of Seattle.