Audubon Lifestyles | Double Oaks – Recycling a Neighborhood

Double Oaks – Recycling a Neighborhood

The Charlotte-Mecklenburg Housing Partnership (CMHP) is literally and figuratively recycling the Double Oaks Community Neighborhood, a 45 acre re-development project that is part of the Statesville Avenue Corridor region of the City of Charlotte, North Carolina.

Double Oaks Recycling
The CMHP’s mission is not only to clean up and rehabilitate stressed neighborhoods, but to foster more sustainable lifestyles for the people that will live in those neighborhoods. A partnership was born between the CMHP and Audubon Lifestyles when they registered the Double Oaks Community Neighborhood in the Audubon Lifestyles Sustainable Development Program.

One result of the partnership between Audubon Lifestyles and the CMHP which is founded in the Principles of Sustainability, was the decision to undertake the organization’s first ever Construction Materials Recycling Program, and to reuse that recycled material directly back into the redevelopment of the Double Oaks Neighborhood.

During demolition of the existing dilapidated single story housing structures at Double Oaks, the developers were left with a significant amount of foundation slabs, concrete sidewalks, and asphalt roadways and parking areas. In an effort to minimize all the material from simply going to construction waste landfills, the CMHP instituted a recycling effort to grind the material into a gravel-like substance and then to utilize that recycled material as a substitute for the gravel materials required for under surface stabilization for new parking, and roadway paving.

In the past, gravel was simply purchased for new development projects. This new endeavor marks the first time that this construction waste recycling approach has been taken by the CMHP. By recycling the materials found on-site, the CMHP financially saved by not having to purchase materials for new pavement, saved on transport costs, and saved on tipping fees that they would have paid for disposal of the old material.

Orlando Badillo, the Housing Development Officer at the CMHP stated it best when he said “It is personally satisfying to know that these previous structures where reused back into the redevelopment process, and didn’t simply end up as waste in a landfill somewhere. At the end of the day there is an enormous feeling of accomplishment when you see the final product, and it makes it all worth it!”