Photo courtesy of Henry W. Schmitt and Wikimedia Commons

Hughes Stadium before demolition began.

Hughes Stadium at Colorado State University in Fort Collins, Colo., is in the throes of demolition, and it's trying to make the process as clean as possible.

The project has a required diversion rate of at least 70 percent of the waste produced, the Coloradoan reported. Many elements of the stadium will be reused in projects across the country. Here's the breakdown:

• According to Tony Flores, project manager for Colorado State University Facilities Management, the steel from the stadium will be sent to local metal recyclers.
• Connell Resources' rock-crushers will pulverize about 40,000 tons of concrete into 1-in. pieces to be used in construction jobs throughout the area.

  "The benefit is two-fold," said John Warren, vice president of operations at Connell. "It reduces the amount of waste going to the landfill, but it also helps alleviate some of the demand for virgin aggregate."

• The stadium's old turf will be repurposed into patches for other fields all over the country.
• A company has agreed to take the seats, remove the metal and then melt down the plastic.
• The University's Pueblo campus has used Hughes' video scoreboard for its stadium.

A Push to Recycle

This type of recycling is nothing new to projects in the Fort Collins area. Since 2012, the city's building code has required that all new construction projects recycle materials like wood, concrete, metal cardboard and masonry. Demolition sites must recycle all of these materials, except for wood, due to the risk of asbestos, lead paint and other treatments that may deem it unrecyclable, according to Jonathan Nagel, an environmental compliance inspector, the Coloradoan reported.

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