It does not matter if you just demolished a building or just put one up; there are always leftover materials or materials left behind. You have metal, brick, concrete and lumber all over the place, but what do you do with it? Most county landfills will either take some of those materials and ask you to take the rest to a dump or you may have to find recycling homes for everything. Here is another idea--salvage. Construction cleanup can benefit from all types of salvage materials. Here is what you can salvage and how to do it.

Brick Salvage

Have your crew dig out as many whole and complete bricks out of the rubble as they can find. Stack these bricks on a solid pallet and then wrap the whole stack with shrink wrap to keep them from tipping over and/or falling off. Masons as well brick manufacturers will buy the "gently used" bricks from you as salvage. They may clean up the bricks and resell them, or pulverize them to make new bricks. Any way you cut it, the bricks are off your construction site and making you a little money in the process.

Wood Salvage

Lumber yards can always recycle wood. Reclaimed wood is a hot item that consumers pay big bucks for, so lumber yards are always willing to buy that from you too. Just like the bricks, you only have to stack it as nicely as you can, then secure the bundles before offering it to the lumber yards.

Metal Salvage

Metal salvage is a piece of cake. There is almost always a metal recycling plant within fifty miles of anywhere, and they pay good money for all the metal your bring them. They typically do not discriminate, nor do they expect you to sort aluminum from steel. Pennies for pounds, so be sure your crew brings in every last bit of metal salvage from a work site that is not needed and will not be used.

Concrete Salvage

Slabs and chunks of concrete can be resold to certain concrete companies. These companies grind up and pulverize the slabs, turning them into powder mix to create concrete slurry, mortar and new slabs of poured concrete. By contributing to this type of salvage, you are also making concrete formation a "greener" practice because new rocks and sand do not have to be quarried. You get paid a little for making your line of work a bit healthier for the planet.

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