What to do with tons of waste from the old house in Radio-Canada?

In total, some 300,000 tonnes of materials will be removed from the site, 70 % of which will be recycled.

But first, why demolish?

The old Canada-Canada house was vast and included gigantic basements which advanced to the René-Lévesque boulevard.

These foundations, even if they supported major studios, one of which is still visible in the main photo of this article, could not serve as a basis for the multiple housing towers which will be built on the site, maintains Ryan Barihi, assistant project manager at Pomerleau.

The former Radio-Canada site will become the Enlightenment district (new window)a residential area with 4,500 homes, dozens of shops, a primary school and a park.

Due to the development that will be done here, explains Mr. Barihi, we could not keep the structures. There will be streets that will be made, there will be parks, a school and larger buildings that require different required in terms of foundations.

So, we were unable to keep everything. What we could keep was the tower, but the rest of the building had to be put on the ground to be able to build the Enlightenment district afterwards.

Concrete

The main residue of the site is the concrete structure which is transformed into a gravel of backfill, explains Simon Hébert, project manager for Delsan Aim, a company specializing in demolition.

In terms of volume, this is obviously what we find the most. [Le béton] represents more than 90 % of the density of what will be recovered here. And it is one of the materials which is the easiest to revalue because once it is treated – reduced in aggregate -, it can be used in embankment.

At the start of the site, concrete residues were transported by truck to other sites to be upgraded. It was then necessary to free up space for the 20 mechanical shovels which often work there simultaneously so the site is colossal.

But more than half of the concrete gravel should serve as a backfill on the very site of the old house in Radio-Canada. It is therefore on site that it is preserved now, and a mountain of gravel rises at the moment more and more every day.

By demolishing the existing building, we go so low that even for future buildings, the majority of them, we will have to go up the embankment before being able to build. Then there are also the streets and future parks. You have to backfildery almost everywheresupports Ryan Barihi, of the Pomerleau firm.

Steel

The concrete steel reinforcement is also recovered and melted in full. The recovery rate reaches 100 %.

Several times a week, dump trucks leave the site loaded with steel rods which are sent to Delsan Aim. Abbreviation AIM means American Iron and Metal Companybut despite its name, it is a Montreal company founded in 1936. AIM then sends the steel to foundries of Quebec to put it back in the world’s circuits according to demand.

Dry materials

Where the recovery rate decreases, it is in the category of dry materials, specifies Simon Hébert.

You have the floors, gypsum materials, there are a lot of wood, a lot of insulation. Normally, in dry products like that, we turn around 75 % to 80 % potential recycling.

Insulates, as are roofing coatings in paved materials, are not recycled, but buried in specialized dumps. There is no market for thatspecifies Simon Hébert.

It is also in the category of dry materials that we find asbestos. Contaminated asbestos products or with lead paints must also be buried.

Most windows contained layers of glass separated by thermos plastic and cannot be recycled either.

Unferral furnishings and metals

There is another category of material that brings together pell-mells containing electrical wiring, window or aluminum door frames, or keys or former employees.

During the site visit for this report, small bulldozers emptied the old permanent contract, the information center, throwing all the old furniture in the void.

These materials are transported by truck to a sorting plant located in Montreal-Est and which belongs to the Delsan Aim company.

It leaves in a shredder. One can think of a paper shredder, but it is a complete factory, with several stages and processes, and all these materials are separated and shredded according to their category. It is a whole automated process that separates all the different metalssays Simon Hébert.

A record that remains to be done

In the construction, renovation and demolition sector, almost half of the subjects go directly to burial, according to the latest Recyc-Québec report published last month. With a recovery target of 70 %, the site of the old radio-Canada house is doing better than the industry average.

For Florent Goldblum, the director of Réco, an organization specializing in the recovery of building materials, it is not only a demolition site, but also of deconstruction.

Deconstruction, for me, is to avoid a bunch of rubble which will cause pollution and which, inevitably, will end up on burial. If your building has no longer exists because you have to give way to a building B, but the elements that composed it have been reintroduced to become something else rather than finish in burial, it is deconstruction. You have preserved part or most of the elements.

Deconstruction generally implies the use of materials of one site as is in another construction. For example, steel beams from the old Champlain bridge were used to build a bridge in the countryside as well as the roof of a warehouse, without the steel having been melted again.

The ideal model for Florent Goldblum would have been to keep the structure of Radio-Canada. He fully understands that this was not possible due to the desired density of housing.

Sébastien Beauregard, the founder of the Sly firm, a social economy company dedicated to the re-use of building materials, also underlines the interesting figures for recovery of the materials of the old house in Radio-Canada. Due to the size and importance of the site, he wishes, however, that an assessment is done at the end.

According to him, there is a nonsense in 2025 to destroy furniture or metal lockers rather than finding them a buyer who would use them as is. It is not yet the standard to make reusehe admits. This requires preparation upstream of the demolition process and must be integrated into the specifications of tenders, if only as a space for reflection and research since the reflex to do it does not yet exist.

Will we be able in the future to learn good blows and blows that we could improve? There may be a post-mortem to do, but I also salute the fact that there is a desire to highlight a site deconstruction practicehe said.

Phase 1 of demolition work along the René-Lévesque boulevard must end before the end of July. Phase 2 which consists in demolishing along avenue Viger will then start to end in November. It was during this second phase that the coating of the old tour brune From Radio-Canada will be removed, leaving only the structure of the building.