Darwin Baas, executive director of the Grand Rapids-based Kent County Department of Public Works (DPW), acknowledges the region’s booming construction sector faces a host of challenges in adopting “zero waste-to-landfill” policies that have become commonplace in West Michigan’s office furniture industry.

While he doesn’t think the path to diverting waste from area landfills will be easy for area construction firms, he’s confident it can be accomplished with the right leadership and planning.

“These are smart, thoughtful tradespeople that if they just got together and said, ‘We’re going to do this differently because this is not a sustainable practice,’ I think we could solve it — I truly do,” Baas said. “You need to move the materials into the right container that’s going to the right place, but we need the place. It’s kind of that Field of Dreams thing: ‘If you build it, they will come.’”

Baas’ pitch to the construction industry comes at a time when the Kent County DPW thinks it has a value proposition for industries to move their waste away from landfills.