FIELD NOTE · SUPPLEMENTAL SET
There is no 65 percent rule: what a demolition owes, by material
ISSUEDJULY 11, 2026DRAWN BY THE NIGHTLY SWEEP
A train of gondolas carrying construction and demolition debris in Worcester, Massachusetts. Photo by Quintin Soloviev CC BY 4.0
Ask what the diversion requirement is and the honest answer is another question. Made of what, and where.
There is no single rule. In unincorporated Los Angeles County a demolition owes at least 70 percent on mixed debris and 100 percent on soil. The state floor underneath both is 65. And in the City of Los Angeles the percentage is only half the obligation, because the material has to arrive somewhere specific.
A load can hit the number and still fail, because it went to the wrong yard.
At least seventy percent of mixed debris, meaning C and D debris other than soil or land clearing debris but including inert debris, must be recycled or reused. One hundred percent of land clearing debris, which the guidelines spell out as shrubs, trees, tree trunks and incidental soil, and rock. One hundred percent of soil debris, managed through recycling, reuse, or disposal in an Inert Debris Engineered Fill Operation. One hundred percent of universal waste such as thermostats.
Read that list as a pricing document. That is what it is. Every line is a different truck, going to a different place, at a different tipping fee. An estimator who treats the job as one number has already lost the difference.
The soil line is the one that surprises people. Soil is heavy. It is the largest tonnage on most demolitions, and it does not get a percentage at all. It gets a destination.
An Inert Debris Engineered Fill Operation is a permitted site that takes clean inert material and places it as engineered fill. Not a landfill. Not a stockpile behind a yard. A permitted operation with a name, which means the soil from a teardown has a paper trail from the moment the excavator loads it.
REQUIRED, BY WHAT THE MATERIAL IS 70 MIXED DEBRIS, LA COUNTY 100 LAND CLEARING DEBRIS 100 SOIL DEBRIS, TO AN IDEFO 65 STATE FLOOR, ALL PROJECTS
So the percentage can move. Ask.
The destination cannot. In the City of Los Angeles, mixed construction and demolition waste has to go to a City Certified processing facility, under the citywide ordinance at Municipal Code section 66.32 and following. Certified is a list. A yard is on it or it is not. Hauling to a cheaper yard off the list does not become compliant by recycling well once the load arrives.
That matters on a bid. The nearest yard and the certified yard are frequently not the same yard, and the difference is measured in truck hours across the whole job. Price the mileage, not the gate fee.
What moved is the paperwork. The 2025 CALGreen cycle, Title 24 Part 11, took effect January 1, 2026 and added a mandatory Construction Waste Management Plan at section 4.408. A plan, written in advance, with tracking and documentation to demonstrate the 65 percent.
That is a different obligation from hitting a number. Hitting a number is something a recycling yard does for you and reports afterward. A plan is something the contractor owes before the first load leaves. The documentation is the deliverable.
Anybody who has been quietly relying on the processor's certificate at the end of the job now owes a record from the beginning of it.
A demolition bid built on cubic yards and a haul rate does not survive contact with this. The tonnage splits by class before it leaves. Concrete and inert go one way under the 70. Vegetation goes another under the 100. Soil goes to an IDEFO. The universal waste, a few thermostats and some lamps, carries a 100 percent obligation and weighs almost nothing, which is the clearest sign that these numbers are not about tonnage at all.
The same logic reaches the fire rebuild work, where the soil is investigated before anything is built on it and where what leaves the lot is regulated as tightly as what arrives. Filings scored nightly for demolition contractors across the Los Angeles record show the teardowns while the disposal plan is still a line item rather than a receipt.
The blind spot worth admitting is that none of this makes a building come apart better. It makes the paperwork heavier and the estimate harder, and whether it changes where the material actually ends up depends entirely on a certified yard doing what its certificate says.
The wrecking is the cheap part. The material has to go somewhere, and somewhere is now specified.
Ask what the diversion requirement is and the honest answer is another question. Made of what, and where.
There is no single rule. In unincorporated Los Angeles County a demolition owes at least 70 percent on mixed debris and 100 percent on soil. The state floor underneath both is 65. And in the City of Los Angeles the percentage is only half the obligation, because the material has to arrive somewhere specific.
A load can hit the number and still fail, because it went to the wrong yard.
Four obligations, not one
The County publishes its requirements by material class, and the classes do not share a number.At least seventy percent of mixed debris, meaning C and D debris other than soil or land clearing debris but including inert debris, must be recycled or reused. One hundred percent of land clearing debris, which the guidelines spell out as shrubs, trees, tree trunks and incidental soil, and rock. One hundred percent of soil debris, managed through recycling, reuse, or disposal in an Inert Debris Engineered Fill Operation. One hundred percent of universal waste such as thermostats.
Read that list as a pricing document. That is what it is. Every line is a different truck, going to a different place, at a different tipping fee. An estimator who treats the job as one number has already lost the difference.
The soil line is the one that surprises people. Soil is heavy. It is the largest tonnage on most demolitions, and it does not get a percentage at all. It gets a destination.
An Inert Debris Engineered Fill Operation is a permitted site that takes clean inert material and places it as engineered fill. Not a landfill. Not a stockpile behind a yard. A permitted operation with a name, which means the soil from a teardown has a paper trail from the moment the excavator loads it.
REQUIRED, BY WHAT THE MATERIAL IS 70 MIXED DEBRIS, LA COUNTY 100 LAND CLEARING DEBRIS 100 SOIL DEBRIS, TO AN IDEFO 65 STATE FLOOR, ALL PROJECTS
The rate is negotiable and the destination is not
The County writes itself a release valve. Where Public Works determines it is not reasonably feasible to divert at the required rate, it may approve a lower rate for that project, and the guidelines give their own example: a project generating a large amount of hard-to-recycle debris such as palm tree waste.So the percentage can move. Ask.
The destination cannot. In the City of Los Angeles, mixed construction and demolition waste has to go to a City Certified processing facility, under the citywide ordinance at Municipal Code section 66.32 and following. Certified is a list. A yard is on it or it is not. Hauling to a cheaper yard off the list does not become compliant by recycling well once the load arrives.
That matters on a bid. The nearest yard and the certified yard are frequently not the same yard, and the difference is measured in truck hours across the whole job. Price the mileage, not the gate fee.
What changed on January 1
The 65 percent figure that gets quoted everywhere is still correct. It is the state floor and it did not move in the 2025 code cycle.What moved is the paperwork. The 2025 CALGreen cycle, Title 24 Part 11, took effect January 1, 2026 and added a mandatory Construction Waste Management Plan at section 4.408. A plan, written in advance, with tracking and documentation to demonstrate the 65 percent.
That is a different obligation from hitting a number. Hitting a number is something a recycling yard does for you and reports afterward. A plan is something the contractor owes before the first load leaves. The documentation is the deliverable.
Anybody who has been quietly relying on the processor's certificate at the end of the job now owes a record from the beginning of it.
Weigh it before you bid it
The practical consequence sits in the estimate.A demolition bid built on cubic yards and a haul rate does not survive contact with this. The tonnage splits by class before it leaves. Concrete and inert go one way under the 70. Vegetation goes another under the 100. Soil goes to an IDEFO. The universal waste, a few thermostats and some lamps, carries a 100 percent obligation and weighs almost nothing, which is the clearest sign that these numbers are not about tonnage at all.
The same logic reaches the fire rebuild work, where the soil is investigated before anything is built on it and where what leaves the lot is regulated as tightly as what arrives. Filings scored nightly for demolition contractors across the Los Angeles record show the teardowns while the disposal plan is still a line item rather than a receipt.
The blind spot worth admitting is that none of this makes a building come apart better. It makes the paperwork heavier and the estimate harder, and whether it changes where the material actually ends up depends entirely on a certified yard doing what its certificate says.
The wrecking is the cheap part. The material has to go somewhere, and somewhere is now specified.