A colossal construction site is in the works at Hydro-Québec’s head office. The Crown corporation is preparing to completely redevelop 23 floors of the iconic downtown Montreal building, which opened in 1962. The entire interior of the building will be deconstructed, including the heating, ventilation and air conditioning systems, which will generate 1,600 tonnes of demolition debris.
According to what The duty learned, the Crown corporation plans to make this project a model for the recovery and reuse of renovation waste. Hydro teams have calculated that at least 70% of deconstruction materials will avoid the landfill — the goal is to reach 80%, a rarity when we know that barely 25% of renovation debris is recycled or reused in Quebec.
Construction, renovation and demolition debris literally clutter up landfills: they represent 38% of the materials sent to landfill sites in Quebec.
At Hydro-Québec, however, it is estimated that a good portion of the residue from the future construction site — wood, metal parts of mechanical systems, partitions between office spaces, but also chairs, tables, carpets, blinds and many other things — could be reused, transformed or recycled.
This project will be one of the first of this magnitude in Quebec to put into practice the principles of the circular economy, which consist of extending the lifespan of materials — by reusing or recycling them — rather than sending them to the landfill.
“The principle of circularity has been anchored in our practices for a very long time,” says Marie-Julie Archambault, Director of Environment at Hydro-Québec. “Expectations are high” for the Crown corporation to be exemplary in managing its waste of all kinds, she adds.
Hydro recycles 95% of the oils used in its activities, particularly in transformers. The hardware of the electricity transmission lines is remanufactured. Work uniforms are resold. Computer equipment, office furniture, filing cabinets and many other items find a second life in the circular economy, rather than ending up in landfills.
Dizzying construction site
The renovations to the head office became necessary due to the dilapidated state of the building, which opened 62 years ago. The heating, ventilation and air conditioning systems have reached the end of their life, according to Hydro-Québec. Teleworking, which has become widespread since the pandemic, has also prompted the Crown corporation to review the layout of its interior spaces to facilitate team spirit.
In preparation for the construction site, at least one floor has been emptied of its occupants, who have been moved elsewhere in the city centre. Hydro-Québec indicates that the work schedule remains to be specified due to the complexity of the project.
The scale of the renovations is staggering: the Crown corporation calculates that 7,038 sheets of gypsum board (weighing a total of 257 tonnes) must be removed, as well as 143 tonnes of ceiling tiles, 6.2 tonnes of soundproofing wool, as well as hundreds of kilometres of electrical wires, metal ventilation parts and piping.
Some 3,000 workstations, separated by 10,000 partitions, as well as 4,000 armchairs are also part of the materials to be managed. The plan provides that 2,000 armchairs and 1,500 pieces of furniture (cabinets, filing cabinets, tables, etc.) will simply be kept, at the head office or in other Hydro-Québec buildings.
Heritage to protect
Making something new out of something old
Work chairs, for example, generally remain functional despite wear and tear on the fabrics and armrests. To extend the life of the furniture, the Crown corporation is partnering with Inovem, the Centre collégial de transfert technologie du cégep de Victoriaville. This college operates the École nationale du meuble et de l’ébénisterie, which has a branch in Montreal.
Inovem researchers, supported by the Réseau de recherche en économie circulaire du Québec, were tasked with verifying the relevance of dismantling furniture in order to rebuild it. “The question is: ‘Can we make something new out of something old?’ It’s not easy, but the answer is yes,” says Adeline Seneclauze, project manager at Inovem.
She and her team dismantled four cubicles (individual workspaces separated by partitions) provided by Hydro-Québec. They concluded that 60% of the residue from these cubicles can be recovered. It is possible to use these materials to rebuild furniture custom-designed for the needs of the Crown corporation.
“Upcycling” furniture is less expensive than buying new, even when you factor in the time it takes to disassemble the furniture, the adjustments that need to be made to each of the materials—for example, planing the wood—as well as the cost of transporting and storing the materials to be reused. Inovem will not manufacture Hydro’s furniture, but will be able to support the supplier who will be selected through a call for tenders.
A strong signal
The reuse of certain construction materials – notably gypsum, insulating glass wool and ceiling tiles – is however considered problematic, in the absence of a sector to transform these residues.
“Hydro-Quebec sends [tout de même] a good signal for major contractors. We feel a real desire to stop sending entire bins of materials to landfill,” says Hortense Montoux, project manager at the Centre for Intersectoral Studies and Research in the Circular Economy (CERIEC), which is supporting the state-owned company in its megaproject.
She views positively the fact of being able to document the challenges of establishing circular economy principles in a major deconstruction project like Hydro’s. “It’s very rarely done in Quebec, and it helps advance thinking,” she says. CERIEC has supported 18 other demolition projects in Quebec as part of its Construction Lab.
Such a project is more complex to manage than renovations carried out outside the circular economy: dismantling takes more time, to avoid damaging the materials. And the materials must be stored or transported, with a view to their future reuse. Contractors must include clauses to this effect in their contracts with contractors.
Two other Hydro building renovation sites, in Blainville and Saint-Jérôme, are testing the possibilities of reusing deconstruction residue. At one of the sites, 90% of the doors will be reused. A small gesture likely to inspire other project managers, which will lead to less debris going to the dump. And which will limit the extraction of precious raw materials used to manufacture doors.