How do I earn the Construction and Demolition Waste Management Credit?

There are two points available for construction & demolition waste management, both using LEED v4 and v4.1. The jury’s still out on whether 4.1 is a better option, but thankfully you can simply toggle back & forth at the end of the project and see which one you’re scoring higher on. For LEED v4, it’s a 50% threshold and a 75% threshold, which just looks at the total amount of waste you’ve generated and how much you’ve been able to recycle. You do need to have multiple waste streams, which means different types of materials, to earn points under v4. In v4.1, there is one point available for 50% diversion, you don’t need any different waste streams for that so it’s pretty easy to get. Option 2, however, looks at pounds per square foot. So that is going to take the total amount of waste you’ve generated, recycled or not, and divide it by your project’s square footage. If it’s less than 15 lb/sq ft for new construction you can earn a point, less than 12.5lb/sq ft you can earn a second point, and for interiors that goes down to 10lb/sq ft. So again, record all of your waste, see if you end up with a diversion % that gets you the points you need – if you need two, you need 75% for v4 – you can always toggle over to v4.1 and see if you are under that lb/sq ft ratio to earn those additional points.