Earthwise owner Kurt Petrauskas denails hardwood flooring on a deconstruction project.

To help boost recycling rates and reduce the amount of waste headed to landfills, the city of Seattle’s Department of Planning and Development (DPD) wants to incentivize deconstruction as a viable means for building demolition.

The department is proposing an almost immediate turn-around for demolition permits to builders that agree to use deconstruction techniques. The proposed changes are part of the city’s overall waste reduction strategy, but the changes are also in response to requests from builders, according to Sandy Howard, sustainable development services manager at DPD.

Demolition permits are currently issued at the same time as construction permits are issued. "This gives the builder a financial incentive to demolish the building as quickly as possible so that new construction can begin as soon as possible," City Council member Richard Conlin said in a statement. "That puts a premium on simply tearing things up and throwing them away rather than carefully removing items that could be reused or recycled."

Deconstruction is becoming an increasingly viable alternative to demolition for single-family residences. King County’s Green Tools program promotes the cost benefits of deconstruction technique by citing the avoidance of disposal costs and income from the sale of reusable materials. Reduced transportation and labor costs is another selling point for deconstruction, as are the environmental benefits, according to advocates,

In Los Angeles, the non-profit organization Reuse People of America said in May that it used a $50,000 grant from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to open a building-materials-reuse retail warehouse where it expects to divert 1,500 tons of demolition materials from the landfill during its first two years of operations. Reusing 30 tons of building materials from one house can reduce greenhouse gas emissions by the equivalent of removing five cars from the road for a year, according to EPA. To receive a deconstruction permit in Seattle, applicants must come up with a waste diversion plan.

The plans must show that all asphalt, brick and concrete from a deconstruction project are recycled and that at least 50 percent of the remaining building materials will be diverted from landfills. Of that, at least 20 percent of the materials have to be salvaged and 30 percent recycled. The DPD plans to submit to the City Council within a month an ordinance that will modify the city’s land-use code to allow a deconstruction permit to be issued while an application for a construction permit is processed. Final passage could come by the end of the year, according to Howard.