Title: From Grave to Cradle: Reincarnation of Building Materials

Author(s): B. te Dorsthorst, A. Fraaij, T. Kowalczyk, and G. Sluimer

Publication: Symposium Paper

Volume: 200

Issue:

Appears on pages(s): 65-78

Keywords: demolition; design for recycling; dismountable building; environmental impact; integral chain management; sustainable building

DOI: 10.14359/10572

Date: 6/1/2001

Abstract:
One of the main problems of sustainable building is that the existing systems don’t lead to clean and direct reusable secondary building materials after demolition. In constructions in the Netherlands many different building materials are being used. When a building has reached its end of life, it will be demolished and it becomes demolition waste. Because a lot of different building materials will be mixed together during the demolition process, much effort must be taken before the Demolition and Construction Waste can be re-used. To solve this problem, two steps need to be taken. Firstly a building should be designed for recycling and secondly all buildings should be dismantled into elements or reduce to in clean secondary materials. The approach here is twofold. Firstly, research into the demolition/dismantling-process in order to find the bottlenecks in closing of the material cycle (at either element or material level). Secondly, as a spin-off of solving these problems, recommendations for future building-systems: design for recycling. This paper describes how certain demolition and dismantling techniques can be used in achieving the goals of sustainable design and construction.