There is a time for building up. And a time for tearing down.

On Saturday, Veishea crowds saw floats wind their way through campus for the Veishea Parade, but not many people know what becomes of floats after the parade.

Brett Showalter, Veishea Parade co-chairman, said the deconstruction process begins a day or two after the parade.

“[The floats] are taken home on Sunday and usually taken apart Sunday night and Monday,” said Showalter, senior in agronomy. “They have to be cleaned up within two weeks.”

Pete Brown, member of Alpha Gamma Rho fraternity, said some of the materials are kept and used for later projects.

“We try to use the good materials still left — the stuff that can’t be used will be thrown away,” said Brown, senior in mechanical engineering.

Showalter said pieces of wood and metal rods often are salvaged. These items are used to construct Homecoming lawn displays and for Varieties sets, he said.

“There’s a lot of recycling,” he said.

However, Showalter said, materials that have been cut, such as Styrofoam, are not reused.

Curt Gear, member of Kappa Sigma, said his fraternity ordered a dumpster to collect the rubbish on Saturday. He estimated that dismantling the float will take two or three hours.

“It will be a big project,” said Gear, senior in management information systems.

Gear said since this is the first year the fraternity has made a traditional float, fraternity members don’t have any set way of taking the float apart.

He said parts of the float will be kept as mementos.

“The people who made the character’s heads have taken them down and put them in their rooms,” he said. “Everyone who put the most time into the float has taken something off the float as a keepsake.”