We have used large quantities of waste materials procured from manufacturers. We have procured waste material like broken bricks form the brick manufacturer. Large quantities of waste concrete from our neighbourhood ready mix concrete supplier. These items were used for various filling purposes and also used as weathering course on the roof. The broken aerated concrete blocks have also been used as insulation in some areas of the building. I was wondering if this qualifies as salvaged materials as these would have ended up in the landfill if not used here. Also the project has saved economically as the replacement filling materials like foam concrete or vermiculite cost significantly higher. Please advice how we can take credit for using waste materials. Thanks Yusuf

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Susie Spivey-Tilson

LEED Fellow, Senior Program Manager for Global Energy & Sustainability

CBRE

LEEDuser Expert

102 thumbs up

Wed, 08/03/2016 - 16:22

In my opinion these seems to be "remanufactured" like noted above: "Can crushed concrete, masonry or asphalt being reused onsite qualify as materials reuse?" No. According to the LEED glossary, these materials are considered remanufactured, and therefore do not qualify as reuse. Under the Related Credits section in the LEED Reference Guide, it states that “Remanufactured materials are not considered a reuse of the material and do not contribute toward this credit. However, these materials can contribute toward MR Credit 2: Construction Waste Management, or MR Credit 4: Recycled Content." Seems they would contribute towardy MRc5 Regional Materials as well.

Yusuf Turab

Managing Director

InHabit & BuildScape

LEEDuser Basic Member

18 thumbs up

Fri, 08/05/2016 - 07:54

Thank you for your time Susie. We only thought that this could be an achievable credit because we found that when we used the default budget method in the materials calculation the material value of 45% was far lower than the actual material value for projects in India. Since labour is cheaper here, the actual material value in projects is closer to 75%. Also, it is virtually impossible for us to use the actual budget method because the general contractor has sub-contracted so much of his work that is not possible to get the accurate material data from each sub contractor at this late stage. There is also a possibility that most sub contractors might have procured materials without any invoices to evade taxes. This has put us in a situation where we are scoring points for material credits quite easily and also there seems to be a possibility of meeting the 2.5% and 5% thresholds for Material Reuse and Rapidly renewable material by simply making small investments and incorporating it in the project now even though these credits were never planned for during the design stage. How do you think evaluators might look at this situation? Thanks Yusuf

Susie Spivey-Tilson

LEED Fellow, Senior Program Manager for Global Energy & Sustainability

CBRE

LEEDuser Expert

102 thumbs up

Mon, 08/08/2016 - 13:05

To be absolutely sure you would want to submit a clarification to GBCI - but I don't think it will change the definition of how they view the materials based on the difficulty of obtaining materials costs. The Rapidly Renewable credit is much more straight forward and if you can reach that threshold I would recommend that.

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