Commons Renovation is a Recycling Bonanza for N.H. Town

More than ninety-eight percent of demolition and construction debris is reused.

September 22, 2008 - Pieces of Phillips Academy's venerable dining hall, long known as “Commons,” have ended up in some unlikely and far-flung places. The well-used rotary toaster oven that browned many a slice of bread and bagel for Andover students is still doing its thing…at the village store in Rumney, N.H.

The village store, as well as Rumney's town office and a new ice rink also gratefully accepted an industrial-sized can opener, chairs, trashcans, wooden cabinets, countertops, brooms and tables. The town sent five men to Andover to dismantle, transport, and then reassemble the old dasher boards from the campus' Sumner Smith Ice Rink that was converted into a temporary dining hall (known as UnCommons) for the duration of the Commons project. By next winter the dasher boards will protect skaters and hockey teams at Rumney's new rink.

Why Rumney? Carl Spring, 55, lives in Rumney-about 100 miles north of Andover-but works as a labor foreman for Consigli Construction, the contractor undertaking the massive renovation of Commons. Materials and equipment that cannot be reused in the construction project on campus are routinely offered up to Consigli supervisors, an offer Spring could not pass up. “With our tax base so low in rural towns-especially because we're surrounded by national forests-this equipment means so much,” he said. “It may not seem like much to folks in more urban areas, but in small towns where we have so few activities for our kids, this makes a big difference. We could never have afforded to build this ice rink from scratch, so with the material from Phillips Academy we hit the jackpot. And our teens have been very involved, from the dismantling in Andover to the construction here in Rumney. It's been good for everybody.”

Spring said he also hauled home enough used wood to build an equipment shed for tools and ice maintenance equipment. “Anything that I can scrounge up, I can find a home for where someone can use it,” he chuckled.

Not only Rumney has benefited from this increased attention to recycling. The Pemi Youth Center in nearby Plymouth gladly accepted the Commons kitchen's washing machine, old but still chugging. Blowers, steel and ductwork have been reappropriated by the Peter Cass Sugar House in Plymouth, and the Wentworth, N.H. Highway Department.

In total, some 1,497 tons of waste from demolition and construction debris have been generated by the Commons project, and of that total, 1,471 tons have been recycled or reused. That's a whopping 98.2 percent of the waste, a number Kate Kolosowski-Gager, the engineer charged with tracking waste for Consigli Construction, called simply, “Awesome! This is one of the highest percentages of any of our contracts. It's gone this well because of the high level of cooperation among all three parties-Phillips Academy, Consigli and the subcontractors,” she added. Kolosowski-Gager is monitoring the 18-month overhaul to make sure it complies with requirements for LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certification, a set of standards for environmentally sustainable construction. One requirement of the LEED protocol is that a minimum of 50 percent of demolition and construction debris be recycled. The fact that at this point in the project-with 56 percent completion-the recycling percentage is more than 48 points above that minimum is a real accomplishment.

It's good for the environment. Good for Phillips Academy. And good for the tiny New Hampshire towns of Rumney, population 1,439; Wentworth, population 798; and Plymouth, population 3508-not counting the student population which doubles the size of this college town. Although Phillips Academy has always made an effort to reuse and donate materials generated by demolition and construction projects, John Rogers, the Academy's sustainability advisor and dean of studies, said that the current project, spurred by the LEED certification goal, takes the concept to a new level. “It's smart, cost-efficient and the right thing to do,” Rogers added.

But not everything gets shipped out of town. Any resusable equipment from the old Commons will be incorporated into the newly named Paresky Commons, and much of the recycling is happening elsewhere on campus. The Academy always seems to be upgrading, repairing and building to improve its historic 500-acre campus. The on-campus Office of Physical Plant (OPP) is reusing a good portion of the 68,000 lbs. of granite that graced the front steps of Commons as curbing for the new student drop-off area by Day Hall. Approximately 1,500 cubic yards of gravel was screened and is being reused on other campus projects, including the new steam line, new walks on the Great Lawn, and the future phase II of the UnCommons project. In addition, compressors, conveyors, fan units, electrical panels and hundred of pounds of miscellaneous hardware have been stored as “spares” and tons of stone have been relocated to the “boneyard” to await their next calling.

Debris and items that can't be reused are destined for six dumpsters, sorted by metal, wood, stone, gypsum, paper and mixed materials-for those items that involve composites. John Galanis, PA's project manager for the OPP, said that the Paresky Commons project is 56 percent completed and is on schedule for its re-opening at the beginning of spring term, March 30, 2009. The project is also on track to earn its LEED certification. And in Rumney, they're just waiting for the temperatures to drop low enough to make ice.