If you are reading these words, written by an architect, you might be thinking about doing a project of your own. You are in the right place, and we should talk. But first, we should think.
When the demolition crew rolls in, and the walls come down, and make their way through the conventional cycle of recycle what you can, repurpose if possible, and send the rest down the solid waste rabbit hole to the nearest landfill, it’s too late to ask yourself this question.
So let’s ask it now: Are you sure you need to trash that?
As buildings are outgrown, outdated, or left in poor disrepair, it is tempting to level the lot and start from scratch. That is one choice, but there are others. Before trashing all of the materials that went into your existing building, consider that there is a massive amount of embodied energy, and embodied carbon, in those walls. Materials including trees, stone, clay, cement, gravel, chalk, sand, soda ash, iron, ore, aluminum oxide were extracted from the earth, using electricity, transportation, fuel, water and manpower in the extraction. More electricity, transportation, fuel, water, manpower and lots of money, will be necessary to trash all of that.
Leaving the materials and the embodied energy in your building intact, finite resources are conserved, resource recovery and recycling fees are not required, freight and transportation costs are eliminated, air pollution is reduced, and the complex organism of your building can be saved, updated, and retrofit for current needs. Modernizing your building can upgrade usability, value, and immediately improve performance and bottom line, without all of that waste.
More than 90% of construction and demolition (C&D) waste comes from demolition. Invisible Infill™ works with your building, if possible, to keep demolition waste to single digits.
Beyond responsible consuming, composting and recycling in our own home, there is not much we can individually do about the mind numbing amount of solid waste regularly generated by households in cities across the US. But collectively, individual actions across millions of households can add up to make a measurable difference.
The same can be true with construction projects. Since construction and demolition (C&D) waste currently accounts for more than double that generated by municipalities in just one year, each building project, done responsibly, can contribute to a collective reduction in that statistic, one project at a time.
Since it’s football season, here’s a pop quiz:
How many equivalent square yards of construction and demolition (C&D) waste are produced each year in the good ol’ United States?
A: 562,500 football fields
B: 56,250 football fields
C: 5,625 football fields
D: 562 football fields
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