Our Seattle region has a very developed state regulated construction waste diversion infrastructure. Over the past few years as methodology with respect to ADC and IWS has changed, local facilities are vying with each other to capture LEED project business. Some of these facilities, the ones that also accept solid waste, have difficulty maintaining a high enough monthly diversion rate to obtain the LEED points that projects are pursuing.

On several recent projects, the facility selected has been providing "eyeball audits" to substantiate the percentage of waste diversion. This style of reporting simply guesstimates what percentage of each material appears to be in that truckload. Then gets an overall weight for the load. The eyeball percentages are then used as if they represented actual material tonnages diverted.

This type of backup will not work for any NC, CI or EBOM project. Yet the facilities claim they are LEED compliant to project teams because these reports are apparently acceptable on LEED for Homes projects. Once a project has contracted with a hauler, this issue is very difficult to resolve.

Michelle, can you clarify whether LEED for Homes actually allows this kind of thing as backup?