There are multiple options to export for construction waste management. For your actual LEED documentation you’ll need to export your Construction Waste Calculator and Construction Waste Management Plan, which is a required upload. For backup, you can get a zip file of all your waste tickets, and if you want an Excel version of the complete log, versus just the construction waste calculator, you can export that as well. Just select the options you want to export, click “export”, and it’ll generate a zip file that you can download at your convenience.

Construction Waste exports available in Green Badger:

• LEED Construction and Demolition Waste Calculator
• Waste Tickets (zip file of all uploaded waste tickets)
• Waste Log (excel log of everything in Green Badger)
• and your Construction Waste Management Plan if the team has uploaded it!

You’ll submit the Calculator and CWM Plan to LEED online.

Having a construction waste management (CWM) plan is a required part of your documentation to earn these credits. If you need one, you can download a template from our “resources” section: simply go to “resources”, go to construction waste management, select a version, and it will download for you in Word. The waste management plan is really just to say “yes, we are indeed providing some thought into how waste is going to be managed on our project”. We’ve got all the boilerplate language, you just simply fill in your details, but really what it’s looking for is:

1. What do you think the materials are going to be on your site? So put a little forethought into that. 
2. Who is managing it within your organization? 
3. Who is your vendor, and how are they gonna manage it? Do they have separate dumpsters? Where are they taking those materials? Is it all comingled? What frequency are they going to be removing them?

So again, it’s nothing more than just a little forethought into how waste is going to be successfully managed on your project. Once you have that plan in place, of course, you can distribute it to your subcontractors, and you can also simply upload it into Green Badger by clicking the CWM plan option, and just upload that file, and save it so that the whole team has access. At the end of the day, you will export that report, as well as your construction waste calculator and those are the two items you’ll submit to LEED Online.

To edit or delete waste entries, you can use the universal icons. The ‘pencil’ icon is always used to edit an entry, and the red ‘trash can’ icon is always used to delete an entry. To edit an entry, simply click on the pencil icon and it will open up your entry so you can update any of the fields. If you accidentally put in 5 tons of concrete and it was supposed to be 50, you can simply go into that entry, put in your correct values, and click the update button. If an entry altogether needs to be removed, simply click the red trash can. A notification will ask, “are you sure?” for verification. Select “okay” and it will delete and remove that entry and remove those values from your totals.

To make a waste entry, as with all credits, the first thing you do is click the “add” button in the upper-right-hand corner. There are a couple of different ways you can make entries. First, you’re gonna select what the material is you’re recycling – concrete – and what did you do with it? If it’s in its own dumpster on-site, it is considered “Recycled – source separated”, so you simply select that option. You put in the total amount – we had 5 tons of concrete, and we recycled all of it. In this case, that’s 100%, your diverted waste equals your total waste. Simply add each additional material – say, we also had a wood dumpster, select wood. It was recycled, there were 2 tons of it, and we recycled all of it. For your waste – the same thing, we have a waste dumpster on site. Simply pick “waste”, that option went to the landfill, none of that is diverted, and put in the total quantity (2 tons). If you have commingled recycling, meaning it’s in one dumpster and they’re simply saying you’re at a certain percentage, simply add it as a waste, pick that it was commingled, the material stream is commingled, percent ADC or alternative daily cover – if they’re using some of that for daily cover, put in what percent that is, otherwise you can leave it blank. And otherwise, just put in the total amount of waste you’ve had, and how much of that was generated, and that will calculate your diversion percentage. Then, simply put in the hauler, the date, and upload the waste report you got those values from, and you are good to go. Some commingled reports will give it to you by material, in that case, you are more than welcome to add it by material – so we have asphalt, commingled recycled, again putting in our weights and diversions. If they are actually sorting that, and weighing that, per your load, you can consider that “Recycled – source-separated”, so in that case enter it by material as “recycled – source-separated” because they are separating it and weighing it for you. If you are just doing regular old commingled for everything, you will want to get some type of waste diversion letter from that facility letting you know how they are getting those waste totals, and you should be good to go.

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.