Wash. The basketball court is the country s first of its kind. Western has engaged some small-scale recycling efforts, most recently the removal of bleachers in Carver gym. Rather than taking all that wood out of the gyms and just throwing it away, Aiken said, we kept a good part of it so we could use it for hand rails and wood paneling. That is a good example of a building material that is too valuable now to throw away. So we recycle it and try to use it.
Traditional buildings consume valuable resources and generate vast amounts of waste.
A standard wood-framed home consumes more than one acre of forest and the waste created during construction averages from three to seven tons, according to the City of Austin Green Builder Program, the nation s first environmental rating system for home construction. Using recycled materials reduces the amount of raw material taken from the land and, in the end, the amount of waste that reaches landfills. Western s geology department research technologist George Mustoe agreed that money is the reason for the lack of recycled materials. People like the cheapest way possible, he added. Many building products are available that are manufactured from recycled materials.