Small changes to Victoria bylaw could boost deconstruction sustainability

Last week, Victoria City Council took another step toward increased sustainability by tweaking legislation to reduce the city’s growing waste problem.

On Feb. 20, councillors voted to approve a motion to revise the demolition, waste and deconstruction bylaw aimed at promoting the salvaging and repurposing of reusable and recyclable materials from building demolitions. The three-year-old initiative is being revisited at a time when construction waste is a major contributor to environmental challenges. A recent staff report indicates more than 30% of Victoria’s landfilled material originates from the construction sector.

A new approach to demolition waste

The bylaw is designed not only to reduce the volume of waste headed for landfills but also to inject valuable construction materials back into a circular economy. A circular economy involves sharing, leasing, reusing, repairing, refurbishing, and recycling existing materials and products for as long as possible.

Additional aims of the bylaw are to facilitate better industry training in deconstruction practices and encourage the development of dedicated reuse storage facilities. Such facilities would consolidate salvaged materials and streamline their redistribution—a move that could further incentivize participation in the process.

The city estimates that as much as 3K tonnes of wood—much of it old-growth lumber salvaged from single-family home demolitions—could be repurposed annually instead of being consigned to the Hartland or another landfill.

Sustainable urban growth

The revised bylaw is not only a local response to an immediate waste management crisis—it is also part of a broader strategy to reduce Victoria’s environmental footprint. With construction, renovation, and demolition (CRD) waste comprising a significant share of the city’s total waste output, the initiative is a critical step toward meeting ambitious regional targets.

The city’s current landfill waste rate of 430kg per capita is well above the regional goal of 250kg and the CRD’s aspirational goal of 125kg per capita.

Nearly 165K tonnes of waste were dumped last year at Hartland, with projections from the CRD suggesting that the landfill could reach capacity by 2100 if current trends persist.

Rory Tooke, Victoria’s manager of sustainability assets and support services, and Rhiannon Moore, the city’s circular economy specialist, recommended two proposed changes they hope will streamline deconstruction processes, encourage compliance, and boost participation from specialized demolition contractors.

The first is to allow a shift away from mass-based target measures of salvaged materials to length-based measure targets for wood salvage. This would simplify the process for contractors who currently have to weigh large quantities of reclaimed lumber on a commercial scale. Not only is the practice cumbersome, it’s unnecessarily challenging when those same materials are going to be reused in other construction projects.

The second staff recommendation for amendments to the bylaw is to “simplify site signage requirements and remove distinct reporting requirements for small quantities of material (500kg or less).

Tooke and Moore’s presentation highlighted the need for improved reporting practices and more efficient processes for applicants seeking demolition permits to better square their costs with the environmental advantage.

Moore highlighted encouraging trends they have observed since the initiative’s implementation in 2022. She noted there are growing options for recycling material—some may be used on-site for the new builds, other materials can be traded or sold to other builders, and some are sent to Habitat for Humanity and other companies that repurpose the wood or other material for products such as garden planters.

Since September 2023, compliance rates have climbed to 60%, but only 62 tonnes of material has been diverted from landfills. Nearly 200 tonnes of construction materials have been repurposed from just 20 demolition permits.

A refundable fee of $19K, paid at the time of the demolition permit application presented early financial incentives to take part in the program. Permit holders receive a full fee refund if they salvage at least 40kg of wood per above-ground square-metre of floor area, a stipulation that has been met increasingly by recent applicants.

According to city staff reporting, only two of 11 applicants met the bylaw’s intended salvage target in 2022. Since the requirement to pay the $19K  refundable fee at the time of demolition permitting was established in September 2023, seven of nine deconstruction applicants met or exceeded the target.

Moore told the council more companies are entering the deconstruction ­market, which means increased competition and the potential for lower prices.

Balancing costs and environmental benefits

The first phase of the bylaw’s enactment was limited to demolition applications for single-family houses built before 1960 for the construction of other single-family houses. In Phase 2, bylaw requirements and targets can be applied to multi-unit housing.

This phase, effective in  May, is designed to capture more demolition projects and maximize waste diversion from Hartland. It does not, however, cover outflow. Nor does it cover the diversion of demolition materials to other places outside the region.

Once the second phase of the bylaw comes into effect, staff anticipates it will apply to more than 20 demolition permits a year.

Since the bylaw’s implementation, the CRD has nearly tripled its tipping fees from $100 to $300 per tonne, a move that further incentivizes waste reduction through deconstruction. There are also tax incentives for homeowners who can take money off their income tax bill if deconstructed materials are donated.”

Coun. Jeremy Caradonna pointed out that Colin Plant, director of the CRD’s Environmental Services Committee, had proposed only days before, that the CRD develop a model bylaw on demolition waste management, based on Victoria’s that could be adopted by other municipalities.

Tooke remarked on the competitive pressures shaping the deconstruction industry. “The cost of conventional demolition are going up and what we are seeing is, as more people enter the market, there is more competition,” he said.

Moore said Victoria currently has less than half a dozen contractors who are exclusively focused on and specialized in deconstruction.

Addressing confusion and streamlining operations

The second key element of the bylaw revisions involves the simplification of on-site signage requirements and a reduction from the 90-day period signage must remain in place on a site from the time of receiving a demolition permit. Currently, every permit under the bylaw mandates signage be put up indicating that deconstruction is in progress—a measure designed to raise public awareness.

However, Moore noted that the requirement has led to unintended confusion in neighborhoods, particularly where a homeowner ultimately decides to “eat the cost of a conventional demolition” but signage indicating that a deconstruction is taking place remains up.

Confusion also arises when signage about a demolition remains up long after there is no longer a house on an empty lot.

Economic realities and future prospects

It costs between $10K and $12K for a conventional demolition. Deconstruction costs can run as high as $30K—a differential some developers are unwilling to bridge, even with a fee refund in place.

Housing starts in Victoria fell from 964 to 439 projects last year—a 54% decline that further complicates the economics of building in the city—despite general growth in the rest of Canada according to reporting from Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC).

Despite the dip, Moore was cautiously optimistic about the growing market for salvaged materials. She noted that the increased costs of waste disposal, coupled with the expanding market for recycled building materials, are gradually tipping the scales in favor of deconstruction. With more companies entering the market and greater competition driving down costs, the long-term outlook for the initiative appears increasingly positive.

“[A] market is there and growing, but still in its infancy,” Moore said, underscoring the potential for growth in the sector over the coming years.