Deconstruction project in Buffalo, New York.

My first column for the Northern Colorado Business Report looks at how the National Center for Craftsmanship, based in Fort Collins, is enabling builders to disassemble structures and recycle materials instead of just demolishing them and dumping the refuse at landfills. For the story, I spoke with Neil Kaufman, the center’s director.

Here’s a short excerpt:

Kaufman proudly boasts that the center runs “the most rigorous deconstruction program in the country.” It even caught the attention of the producers of “Renovation Nation,” a program on Planet Green, a Discovery Channel cable network. A film crew spent a day this past March shooting center-trained crews of students and contract workers deconstructing farm buildings on the Andrejeski property on Overland Trail in north Fort Collins. The city now owns the land and plans to protect it as open space. The coverage will be part of an episode filmed around Colorado, scheduled to air sometime this summer.

Kaufman says deconstruction taps into environmental, educational and economic sustainability (can you say “green jobs”?), but the economic advantages have always been the most tricky to cultivate.