Until four years ago the Wisconsin Division of Facilities Development (DFD), the agency responsible for building and maintaining all state-owned properties, did almost no recycling on state building projects. Since January 2008 however, when Wisconsin started to require recycling on some projects, more than 140,000 tons of construction and demolition (C&D) waste has been diverted from landfills, representing a project cost savings of more than $4 million.
What led to this turnaround? How did this state agency go from recycling almost none of its waste to diverting more than 90 percent of it from landfills?