Green Roofs - Living Architecture Monitor - Spring 2011 - (Page 8)
ON THE ROOF WITH…
“THE LINEAR FLOW OF MATERIALS INTO BUILDING AND THEN TO LANDFILL IS NOT SUSTAINABLE FOR SOCIETY.”
–Bradley Guy
that future reuse, recycling or disposal has on the product or building’s environmental burden at its inception. The tremendous volume of construction and demolition waste — and the fact that the majority is from renovation and demolition, not from new construction — also increases the importance of how and where these waste impacts can be mitigated at the product manufacture or building stage.
MG: I think that both Design for Assembly
(DfA) and Design for Disassembly (DfD) are driven by an increasing awareness that we need to get more use out of the resources we invest in our buildings, and reduce waste that we generate. The Worldwatch Institute estimates that by the year 2030 the world will have run out of many raw building materials and we will be reliant on recycling and mining landfills1. At the other end of the lifecycle, construction and demolition waste contributes about 35 percent of the total waste stream in Canada. There is a growing awareness in some parts of the world that we need to develop cyclical systems so that resources are kept in
use and not discarded. So, with DfA the intention is make buildings more adaptable and flexible so that they last a long time and evolve over their lifetime with changing needs. DfD facilitates the easy deconstruction of a building at the end of its life in such a way that maintains the useful and economic value of many of its components and materials. Many temporary and relocatable buildings and structures around the world are already assembled using reversible processes. The same idea can be applied to new construction, even green roofs.
BG: It will become mainstream practice for
demolition to always involve materials reclamation in the future. The linear flow of materials into building and then to landfill is not sustainable for society given the tremendous amount of materials consumed in the built environment on an annual basis.
MG: We should also look to other industries
which are beginning to rethink how products are put together so that they can increase the usefulness and value of components at the
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LIVING ARCHITECTURE MONITOR
SPRING 2011
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Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Green Roofs - Living Architecture Monitor - Spring 2011