Yisroel R.

New York City is launching a first-of-its-kind one-year trial at MADE Bush Terminal in Sunset Park aimed at keeping usable construction materials out of the waste lands and putting them back to work on future projects.

Under the new program, materials recovered from construction and demolition sites will be brought to the Bush Terminal location, where they can be sorted, stored, reused and redistributed instead of simply being thrown away. The city says the effort is designed to test whether a dedicated reuse system can work on a larger scale across New York City.

The trial will be operated by Brooklyn-based ecological landscaping company Our Temenos, while NYCEDC studies how practical and financially sustainable the system is. Construction and demolition materials currently make up roughly 40% of New York City’s total waste stream, making it one of the largest sources of material sent through the city’s waste system.

Rather than treating all removed construction material as garbage, the new setup is intended to identify items that still have value and keep them in circulation. The city will use the one-year trial to study how much material can realistically be recovered, how efficiently it can be stored and redistributed, and whether similar operations could eventually be expanded elsewhere.

Interestingly, the trial is being launched at the same Bush Terminal property that is itself in the middle of a major transformation. The historic industrial site is being redeveloped into the 20-acre MADE Bush Terminal campus, with new industrial workspace, cultural and public programming areas, and acres of new open space. It is not yet clear exactly how the construction-material operation will function alongside the ongoing redevelopment project at the site, or whether either project could affect the other as work continues across the site.

The broader redevelopment is continuing, including plans to transform it into several additional acres of waterfront public space with lawns, coastal landscaping, harbor access and other improvements expected to open in 2027. At the same time, the property remains an active industrial campus, giving the city room to test the construction-material reuse program while one of Sunset Park’s largest waterfront sites continues to be reshaped.