Light House Releases Results from Metro Vancouver Construction Plastics Pilot

Light House, an organization focused on advancing regenerative and circular practices in the built environment, has released results from the Construction Plastics Initiative, a 14-month pilot that tracked plastics across eight active construction sites in Metro Vancouver (Canada) and demonstrated how these materials can be recovered and reintegrated into new building materials under real-world conditions. The pilot marks one of the first efforts in North America to follow construction plastics from jobsites through collection, sorting, processing and manufacturing.

Launched by Light House in 2024, CPI was created to address a major gap in how plastic waste is understood and managed in construction, renovation and demolition activities. While most attention has focused on consumer packaging and single-use plastics, construction-related plastics have remained largely overlooked. Through the pilot, materials from eight commercial construction sites were collected, tracked, sorted, processed and reintegrated into manufacturing, demonstrating how construction plastics can be recovered and reused in new building materials.

Delivered in partnership with contractors including Aecon, EllisDon, and Scott Construction, the study followed plastics across major projects including the Holdom Overpass Project in Burnaby, PNE Amphitheatre, Steveston Community Centre and Library, Cloverly School, Amazon and Microsoft tenant improvement projects and Lynn Fripps Elementary School. Together, these projects provided a real-world dataset and one of the clearest pictures to date of how construction plastics are generated, handled and what can be recovered in practice.

Across participating sites, more than 38,000 kilograms of plastic were collected. Of the 34,268 kilograms sent for sorting, approximately 77% was successfully classified for recycling. The strongest results were observed in clean, packaging-related materials such as films and wraps. Approximately 23% could not be processed due to contamination, handling conditions or system limitations, despite being technically recyclable, showing that much of what is lost is recoverable with the right systems in place.

Plastics generated during construction are often dominated by packaging materials. These materials are typically clean, consistent and produced in high volumes, making them among the most readily recoverable plastics on construction sites. The findings show that a significant share of construction plastics, particularly packaging-related materials, can be recovered under the right conditions.

Building on these findings, the pilot also demonstrated how these materials can be put back into use. This represents an early step toward treating construction plastics not as waste, but as part of a more circular material system. Across Canada, more than 7 million tons of plastic enter the market annually. Only 26.5% is diverted and just 5.3% is recycled, with essentially no recovery from the construction sector.

Plastic waste from construction sites accounts for more than 30% of all plastic waste generated in Canada. Most of this material continues to move through a linear system in which products are manufactured, used briefly and discarded. This positions construction plastics as a significant and largely untapped opportunity to recover materials already being generated at scale.

While the pilot shows what is achievable under the right conditions, scaling this approach across the industry will require consistent recovery pathways that can capture, separate and process materials across construction sites. Without these systems in place, a significant share of recyclable plastics will continue to be lost.

The report identifies what is needed to support that shift, including improved tracking through the Federal Plastics Registry, expanded producer responsibility for construction-related plastics and packaging, more localized consolidation and receiving hubs and policy tools such as variable tipping fees, landfill bans on recoverable plastics and incentives for manufacturers using post-consumer recycled resin.

The full findings from the study are available here, including access to register for the May 26 webinar, “Building a Circular Value Chain for Construction Plastics.” Light House is planning to expand the initiative in 2027. Developers and general contractors interested in participating are encouraged to contact Light House directly at https://www.light-house.org/cpi/#cpiregister.