Green construction practices are becoming more the norm. This parking lot, for example, is being built with a rain garden, porous pavement and an underground storage system to keep storm water runoff from reaching creeks and waterways.

Here is another example, the partial deconstruction of these houses before they're demolished.

Greg Wright is with Syracuse Habitat for Humanity.

“We are trying to stay ahead of the wrecking ball and pulling out valuable material from the houses they're taking down here,” said Greg Wright, Habitat for Humanity.

Just from this house, workers are salvaging 14 doors, 300 square feet of maple hardwood flooring, banisters, porch columns, and even the stone walkway.

Eventually it's for sale to the public and we donate to other non-profits when they have needs, they call up and need a furnace or a water heater and if we've got it they can have it.

The stone from the sidewalk will be cleaned up and will sell for 80 cents apiece.

Wright says demolition is still the rule in Syracuse but deconstruction is being embraced elsewhere.

There is a gentleman out in Washington State who runs his own (deconstruction) business now and in the past ten years he has taken down 2'500 buildings himself.

There is an organization down in Ithaca called Fingerlakes Re-Use It; they actually have three people working fulltime doing full-scale deconstruction. Buffalo Re-Use It started four years ago, I believe, when the city announced they wanted to take down 10,000 houses a year.

Wright admits deconstruction is more costly, maybe ten percent more expensive.

“Really full-scale deconstruction is economically viable if you figure in the cost of carbon sequestration. All the material that is being knocked down and hauled away from this site is going to rot and release carbon or it's going to be burned in the incinerator and release carbon back into the atmosphere,” said Wright.