Workers this month demolished the 130,000-square-foot building at Mills Road and Main Street to make way for a new Lowe's home improvement store. Montgomery Ward closed its store in January 2001 after declaring bankruptcy.
Instead of hauling off the tons of debris to a dump, workers separated much of it into piles of different materials, including concrete, wood, steel and glass. City officials say it's the largest such effort ever in Ventura.
Recycling the materials not only will preserve dwindling landfill space, but it also will save the project's contractor an estimated $200,000.
Dumping fees will be greatly reduced, and the company will sell some of the recyclables.
"It makes environmental sense and economic sense," said Carl Johnson, president of Near-Cal, the project's general contractor.
It seems almost everything these days can be recycled, even drywall.
"The gypsum from the drywall can be mixed in the soil to strengthen strawberry skins," said Marialyce Pedersen, an analyst with the county's Environmental and Energy Resources Department.
Recycled concrete also is a hot item, Pedersen said. New environmental regulations make it a lot harder to mine the sand and gravel used to make concrete.
Instead of paying $33 to $55 a ton to dump concrete at a disposal site, many contractors now give it to recyclers and are charged nothing.
While the Montgomery Ward demolition is complete, the recycling process continues at the site.
Workers first put the concrete through a giant crusher they installed at the site, Johnson said. The crushed concrete is later separated into rock and sand at the recycler's facility, and these materials are then resold.
Johnson said some of the materials also might be reused in the construction of a Lowe's store, scheduled to be built on the 13.5-acre lot later this year.