From rowhouse renovations to large-scale development, construction activity reshapes Philadelphia every day. But what happens to the materials left behind after a building project? Construction and demolition debris, from wood and drywall to metal and concrete, is one of the city’s largest waste streams and one of its most powerful opportunities to build circular systems. How these materials are handled after they leave a job site shapes everything from building costs and landfill reliance to whether materials are properly managed or illegally dumped.

In this episode, Candice Lawton and Sam Wittchen take listeners inside the fast-moving, behind-the-scenes world of construction and demolition material recovery. They speak with Alan Burns of Richard S. Burns & Company about what it takes to run a high-throughput, multi-generation recyclin ...