First Published in 2006. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Interest in green and sustainable design is growing throughout the world. Both national and local governments are active in promoting reuse and recycling in order to reduce the amount of waste going to landfill. This guide identifies how building designers and constructors can minimize the generation of waste at the design stage of a building project by using reclaimed components and materials. Authoritative, accessible and much-needed, this book highlights the opportunities for using reclaimed components and materials and recycled-content building products for each element of a building, from structure and foundations to building services and external works. Current experience is illustrated with international case studies and practical advice. It discusses different approaches to designing with recycling in mind, and identifies the key issues to address when specifying reclaimed components and recycled materials in construction work. This book will be invaluable for building professionals including architects, specifiers, structural and service engineers, quantity surveyors, contractors and facilities managers as well as students of architecture and civil engineering. Published with NEF

The need to establish material cycles in the building industry is undisputed. Knowledge on this topic is available in many places: In this book it is summarised and systematized. After a general overview of the quantities generated, recovery rates and areas of application of recycled building materials, the current processing steps on which recycling is based and the possibilities for influencing the product properties are discussed. Furthermore, recycling building materials are characterized and their fields of application are presented. The starting point is always the original building material, which is later found in the construction waste. The focus is on the structural properties. The environmental aspects, which have determined the discussion for years, are shown to the necessary extent. The book concludes with a chapter that presents new developments in processing technologies and analyses the potential of construction waste as a source of raw materials.

A valuable source of information, insight, and fresh ideas about a crucial aspect of the growing sustainable design movement Mounting resource shortages worldwide coupled with skyrocketing extraction costs for new materials have made the prospect of materials reuse and recycling an issue of paramount importance. A fundamental goal of the sustainable design movement is to derive utmost use from construction materials and components, including energy, water, materials, building components, whole structures, and even entire infrastructures. Written by an expert with many years of experience in both industry and academe, this book explores a wide range of sustainable design strategies which designers around the globe are using to create efficient and aesthetically pleasing buildings from waste streams and discarded items. Emphasizing performance issues, design considerations and process constraints, it describes numerous fully realized projects, and explores theoretical applications still on the drawing board. There is a growing awareness worldwide of the need for cyclical systems of materials reuse. Pioneering efforts at “closed-loop” design date as far back as 1960s, but only recently have architects and designers begun to focus on the opportunities which discarded materials can provide for creating high performance structures. A source of insight and fresh ideas for architects, engineers, and designers, Resource Salvation: Reviews the theory and practice of building material and waste reuse and describes best practices in that area worldwide Describes projects that use closed-loop thinking to influence and inspire the design of components, interiors, whole buildings, or urban landscapes Illustrates how using discarded materials and focusing on closed loops can lead to new concepts in architecture, building science, and urban design Demonstrates how designers have developed aesthetically compelling solutions to the demands of rigorous performance standards Resource Salvation is a source of information and inspiration for architects, civil engineers, green building professionals, building materials suppliers, landscape designers, urban designers, and government policymakers. It is certain to become required reading in university courses in sustainable architecture, as well as materials engineering and environmental engineering curricula with a sustainable design component.

”Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, and Recover“ is the sustainable guideline that has replaced the ”Take, Make, Waste“ attitude of the industrial age. Based on their background at the ETH Zurich and the Future Cities Laboratory in Singapore, the authors provide both a conceptual and practical look into materials and products which use waste as a renewable resource. This book introduces an inventory of current projects and building elements, ranging from marketed products, among them façade panels made of straw and self-healing concrete, to advanced research and development like newspaper, wood or jeans denim used as isolating fibres. Going beyond the mere recycling aspect of reused materials, it looks into innovative concepts of how materials usually regarded as waste can be processed into new construction elements. The products are organized along the manufacturing processes: densified, reconfigured, transformed, designed and cultivated materials. A product directory presents all materials and projects in this book according to their functional uses in construction: load-bearing, self-supporting, insulating, waterproofing and finishing products.

The construction industry is increasingly committed to lessening its impact on the environment; reducing waste and making better use of unavoidable waste is key to this commitment. Cost, time, availability and quality all affect the use of reclaimed and recycled materials. Much of the responsibility to juggle these issues lies with the demolition, reclamation and recycling industries. The demolition industry provides most of the resource available for reuse and recycling, given sufficient time. The reclamation industry enables the reuse of building materials and components. The recycling industry processes large volumes of materials into raw materials for new applications. These industries are highly specialised and can be identified separately but they can overlap and so become difficult to define. Based on recent surveys, this information paper gives a snapshot of the present position in the reclamation and recycling industries.

Dieser umfassende Leitfaden zur Evaluierung, Auswahl und zum Einsatz nachhaltiger Materialien im Landschaftsbau bietet einen Überblick über Strategien, mit denen sich die Auswirkungen herkömmlicher Baumaterialien auf die Umwelt und die menschliche Gesundheit minimieren lassen, und stellt ökologische Alternativen vor. Neben detaillierten und aktuellen Informationen zu Baumaterialien für eine "grüne Bebauung" erhält der Leser eine Einführung in Werkzeuge, Techniken, Vorstellungen und Quellen für die Evaluierung, Beschaffung und Spezifikation nachhaltiger Baustoffe. In den jeweiligen Kapiteln werden sowohl herkömmliche als auch neue ökologische Materialien, Auswirkungen der einzelnen Baustoffe auf die Umwelt und die menschliche Gesundheit sowie Strategien zur Minimierung derartiger Belastungen beschrieben. Fallstudien geben Auskunft über Kosten und Leistungsmerkmale und dokumentieren die gesammelten praktischen Erfahrungen.