An East Coast construction worker recently shared a saddening image to Reddit — a practically new office complex being torn down just to repurpose the space for a reported Amazon facility.
"My coworkers and I [are] tearing down a near brand-new office complex because Amazon wants to build an AWS data center," they wrote. "None of the structures were over 12 years old."
Construction uses a huge proportion of the world's resources every year. As the BBC reported, it accounts for more than 40% of the world's heat-trapping air pollution and generates one-third of the world's trash.
Nevertheless, this Redditor claimed that Amazon went ahead with it.
The photo they shared showed a large excavator tearing at one side of a building. While the structure had begun to collapse into rubble thanks to the heavy machine, the part still standing appeared in perfect condition, with huge windows in a flawless facade.
"This is so stupid," complained one commenter. "What a waste of resources."
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The original poster said their company tried to minimize the impact of the project by recycling the materials it recovered.
"We salvage about 80-85% of the material," they explained. "Concrete is ground up into gravel; steel is melted down and reused."
However, not all the materials could be salvaged, and the Redditor noted their disappointment at how the situation was being handled.
"Glass is useless... sadly," the original poster wrote.
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Meanwhile, all the energy that went into constructing the building in the early 2010s went to waste.
Stories like these seem contradictory, given what Amazon has said about its climate goals. The company has invested in electric vehicles and eco-friendly packaging to reduce pollution. But on the flip side, its data centers produce a shocking amount of pollution — and apparently, that starts before the first server is even switched on.
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