YOU conscientiously collect paper, glass and plastics for recycling—so
how about recycling your home as well? Salvaging materials from a demolished
building and reusing them could halve the amount of raw materials that have to
be dug up to build a new one, and cut the energy needed by 10 per cent,
according to research in Japan.
“Construction trash is a big problem,” says Weijun Gao at Waseda University’s
Advanced Research Institute for Science and Engineering in Tokyo. Japan
currently builds twice as many new homes as the US, and during the 1990s the
country’s construction industry, which accounts for one-fifth of Japan’s gross
domestic product, produced 20 times as much waste as its American counterpart.
Given Japan’s small size, disposing of the waste is becoming a headache. “It is
very difficult to find a place to discard it because of the limited land.”
Gao, together with colleagues at Waseda and the University of California,
Berkeley, examined three types of residential building to estimate how much
energy could be saved by using recycled materials. “Recycling” included the
disassembly, collection, sorting and processing of materials into new products
as well as the reuse of structural components, such as girders.
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While recycling key materials such as steel and aluminium saved some energy,
reusing components gave much higher savings. The researchers recommend that
completely new building designs should be developed to make it easier to
dismantle and reuse components.
“There’s a definite move towards more sustainable waste management within the
industry in the UK,” says James Hurley of Britain’s Building Research
Establishment. He sees taxes on landfill sites, rather than other environmental
considerations, as the key factor driving this change. “More efficient waste
management will increase profit margins to provide the incentive to recycle,” he
says.