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Mark Anthony's Blog

This is Mark Anthony's Blog.

US Contract, Global Issue

November 2nd, 2009

On Sunday this week, the crowds will gather to say a fond farewell to the Executive Inn, affectionately known to Owensboro, Kentucky locals as the “Big E”.  The hotel, which once played host to the likes of Frank Sinatra, has been the subject of much conjecture ever since it was slated for demolition.

First it was embroiled in a low-bid furore; then there seemed to be a huge confusion over the method that would be used to fell the building with suggestions that TV executives had been involved in the decision process; and this past weekend, the Big E played host to teams of fire fighters as pre-weakening works caused multiple fires within the structure.

But when the sound of this Sunday’s implosion has faded and the dust has settled, what will be the legacy of this once popular hotel venue? Well, in my opinion, ol’ Blue Eyes will forever be linked to Vegas, not Kentucky; demolition will remain an inexact science that often requires contractors to analyse multiple methods (with or without TV executive input) before the most appropriate process is selected; and for all the training in the world, fire remains an ever-present danger whenever demolition workers use hot cutting equipment.

Instead, the Big E’s lasting legacy is likely to be the overwhelming and subsequent closure of the demolition waste area of the local landfill which is already bracing itself for the arrival of 65,000 cubic metres of rubble. Worse still, local city officials report that the cost of creating a replacement demolition waste area will be close to $1 million.

Sadly, that $1 million is merely the tip of a large and unnecessary iceberg that could so easily have been avoided if the contractors and city officials embraced the levels of recycling and materials reuse that are now commonplace in Europe and Scandinavia.

How much of that 65,000 cubic metres, I wonder, actually needs to go to landfill. Certainly, being a hotel, the contract is likely to contain a fair degree of gypsum and other “soft-strip” material which would certainly bulk-out the waste volumes. And the chances are that the structure will contain at least some asbestos that would be destined for the landfill. But 65,000 cubic metres?

Here in the UK, the members of the National Federation of Demolition Contractors annually achieve a recycling rate of more than 95% of all waste arisings. In fact, while the calculations of demolition costs might take a week or two, the average UK demolition contractor could provide a pretty accurate estimate of recycling rates and resale values based on little more than a 20 minute site walk-around.

And yet in the US, those calculations are largely bypassed and are replaced merely with the cost of haulage to the nearest tip. Now I understand that the US has far more space to play with.

I realise that landfill space remains relatively plentiful and comparatively inexpensive. And I know that Americans are a long way from exhausting the nation’s natural resources of aggregates and other virgin materials. But surely we have now reached the point in time when such arguments are no longer about the remaining resources of one nation but about the rapidly diminishing resources of one world.

There is a gaping hole in the ozone layer above the Antarctic but no-one has suggested that this problem belongs solely to the handful of local people and scientists that call this hostile landscape home. Instead, its effects on global warming are being addressed globally.

Likewise, each time a US demolition contractor consigns a ton of “waste” to landfill, he is not only dumping a potential resource that he could personally resell at a profit; he is depriving the world of a ton of potentially valuable material; he is creating the unnecessary demand for another ton of the world’s virgin aggregates; and he is filling in another of the world’s remaining cubic metres of rapidly diminishing available landfill space.

In the case of Owensboro’s Big, that is 65,000 cubic metres of wasted resource; 65,000 cubic metres of virgin material to replace it, and 65,000 cubic metres less available landfill space in the world.

My guess is that these facts won’t get a mention in the exclusive TV footage.

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