Lifecycle Building Center
Breaking Barriers, Opening Doors
According to the EPA, construction and demolition waste is the largest single-stream source of refuse in the United States—more than double the amount we toss into our home trash cans each year.
In Atlanta, the nonprofit Lifecyle Building Center (LBC) enacts its mission of strengthening communities through building material reuse by capturing usable building materials from the waste stream and directing them into primarily underserved communities through reuse. LBC’s core program is its Reuse Center and Store in Southwest Atlanta, where it accepts material donations—from cabinetry and tiles to doors and sinks—and resells them to the community at deeply discounted rates. LBC also distributes free materials to nonprofits through its Nonprofit Material MATCH Program, which has put more than $1.3 million worth of materials into the hands of 300+ nonprofits.
The building materials that Lifecycle and similar organizations capture for reuse are recovered through a process called deconstruction—the careful dismantling of materials that keeps them whole, intact, and ready for their next purpose.
But this is just one of many ways Lifecycle fulfills its mission. When LBC and a partner organization, Build Reuse, received a job training grant from the EPA in 2019, LBC convened 40+ community, nonprofit, governmental, and educational organizations to form the ReBuildATL coalition, which empowers communities in Atlanta’s Westside through access to living-wage jobs and increased energy independence.
The coalition first created Breaking Barriers Through Deconstruction, a workforce training program rooted in environmental sustainability and racial equity. Breaking Barriers offers paid vocational training to individuals seeking to overcome barriers to employment, opening the door for them to find long-term, living-wage jobs in industries needing workers with skills in construction, deconstruction, demolition, remodeling, and facility management. The program’s first cohort graduated 12 trainees in 2023, with plans to serve 120 individuals over the next three years.
In addition to creating job opportunities, Breaking Barriers also aims to scale the capacity and impact of the overall building material reuse industry.
“At Lifecycle, we want to have the ability to do full-scale deconstruction projects and support the increasing demand for deconstruction services in metro Atlanta,” said Shannon Goodman, Lifecycle’s Executive Director. “It’s not just about Lifecyle, but about the entire ecosystem of building material reuse and how we can bolster that locally through workforce training.”
While preparing for the next Breaking Barriers cohort, the ReBuildATL coalition is also creating a holistic framework that responds to other challenges experienced in Atlanta’s Westside communities, including higher energy burdens and lack of access to renewable energy systems.
LBC’s long-term goal for the program is to provide historically marginalized individuals with meaningful career pathways and family-sustaining jobs, help disadvantaged communities prepare for future connection to renewable energy systems, and grow access to more affordable, low-embodied carbon construction materials.
“Many of the residents LBC serves are income-restricted and need support addressing critical home repairs,” said Goodman. “We realized that our coalition could train individuals in both deconstruction and construction so that our trainees can not only learn how to save materials for reuse but also gain hands-on experience implementing home repairs, energy-efficiency retrofits, and weatherization improvements for these residents.”
We partnered with Lifecycle on their “Reclaiming Our Future” capital campaign, guiding them in every way they wanted to grow—from campus rehabilitation to program expansion. To learn more about Lifecycle and its work, visit https://www.lifecyclebuildingcenter.org/