What happens to the trees?

So I tried to follow up on my question in class about what happens to all the trees that are cleared when a big scale building project takes place. It just seems ridiculous to me that people jump through hoops all the time to try and cut down large numbers of trees for product but when they are cut down to clear the land the trees would just be scrapped. My extensive googling really didn't yield a lot of results, mostly just specific regulations of companies or what they are required to do with the scraps from these building projects as far as properly cleaning the land. They also had a lot of regulations about replanting the land. For example one source required replanting for "all new commercial and multi-family developments, new single family residential, building additions to non-SF residential that exceed 1000 square feet, new parking lots or expanded portion of old lots" etc. All of which I believe is a great idea but what about the trees that have already been cleared? I just believe sometimes we are too wasteful in cases like these. I know it takes a lot more thought and planning to consider what to do with the trees in a building project especially since they are considered the "waste" but at the rate we are clearing land and the amount of trees we need maybe we need to be more resourceful with "waste" materials. I would be really interested to know if there are any specific regulations in the Adirondacks for situations like these.