MIT's extensive capital construction program and ongoing renovation projects are transforming the look of the campus, but also have a less visible side effect: the creation of large amounts of waste. Construction waste includes cardboard, wood scraps, pallets, containers and plastic, while renovations also generate a wide variety of waste materials depending on the building.

Challenges to increasing the recycling and reuse of C&D debris are many: space, project sequencing, mixed loads, and MIT's project approach (MIT's contractors are generally responsible for the waste from their projects.) In 2001, the Facilities' Capital Projects group, MIT's Environmental Programs / EHS Headquarters Office , and Jim Curtis of the EHS Office, made significant progress toward addressing this last point, implementing changes to the specifications and contracts to require minimum recycling by all contractors on Capital Projects. More recently, DCS (the group in Facilities responsible for renovations) and EHS are working to begin to develop practical approaches to increase recycling on those smaller - but more numerous - projects across campus.