the beginning of the 20th century. But with the full-blown triumph of the postwar Fordist Waste Economy, and the maturation of the industrial river economy, the modern construction and demolition (C&D) waste management industry left its conservationist past behind. Todays new deconstruction industry is recovering some of its ancient practices, but the challenges facing the contemporary movement are much greater due to the complexity of contemporary products and building systems; material toxicity; and logistical problems of findingor even creatingmarkets for recyclables. Deconstruction workers are in a sense transitional labourers in an economy metamorphosing from the wasteful brute force of conventional demolition to the clean elegant world of designed disassembly. Todays workers have to struggle with composite materials that are not easily separated, as well as building layers not so intelligently melded together. They and their supervisors have to deal with timetables that do not allow sufficient time for deconstruction. And they have to deal with a unlevel playing field where their C&D waste competitors can externalize the real costs of demolition onto society and the environment. That said, the number of success stories is growing. In places like Hartford CT., Portland OR, Minneapolis, Vancouver and San Francisco, deconstruction initiatives are proving they can financially compete with or outperform demolition firms create skilled permanent jobs for less than $6000 in training per worker (less than half of the US Housing and Urban Development Department [HUD] typical training allowance)