I work for a major precast/prestressed manufacturer. Our products are always designed, manufactured and installed for each individual project. However, we sometimes have a few units sent to stockpile for various reasons and may never be used for any future project. Can these products be used for a future project and count as Material Reuse? We have been approached by a General Contractor working on a project pursuing LEED certification and they want to cover an existing pool (that will be used as a grey water cistern) with a few pieces of our stockpiled hollowcore. They plan on counting the plank toward Material Reuse credit. Since the material is not from another 'site' and was not installed in a previous structure I'm not sure if this qualifies as material reuse.
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David Posada
Integrated Design & LEED SpecialistSERA Architects
LEEDuser Expert
1980 thumbs up
April 11, 2011 - 12:45 pm
I don't think stockpiled materials that remain in a company's inventory would be accepted as reuse since it hasn't "entered the market." If you compare this to how pre-consumer recycled content is addressed you'll see a parallel: If a wood mill re-uses waste from its own process such as sawdust from milling lumber to make another product such as particle board or MDF, that doesn't count toward recycled content. It's usually seen as a simple cost-cutting choice that many businesses would be likely to do.
However, if the surplus or by-product is sold to another company, that now creates a market for recycled for re-used content and would likely qualify for the credit.