Recycling of materials has always had a role in construction (underpinning architectural salvage shops/dealers around the country), but what if we widened such efforts so at dismantle all buildings at the end of their lives rather than just demolish them?

The re-use of generic (rather than specialist) material(s) is one key aspect of turning construction greener, requires no special equipment; just time & effort.

An interesting proposal?

#construction #recycling
https://theconversation.com/demolishing-buildings-is-bad-for-the-planet-heres-an-alternative-223596

@Talia

Yes, that's fair; but right now in the UK, the thrust of the article (with which I agree) is we are *not* reusing as much as we could be....

@ChrisMayLA6 Yes, that's true. Planning departments are too ready to allow demolitions and are not prioritising future-proof building practices (eg. energy efficiency)

At the same time, there is too much focus on flashy tech solutions - let's put bricks on the blockchain and that will fix everything!

We need a different way of thinking about these problems entirely

@Talia @ChrisMayLA6 I think it's a side-effect of real estate being a long-term financialized asset bubble, which has in turn made demolition/reconstruction "affordable" (by making the land asset a colateral for immense loans, against which the cost of construction is lost in the small print).

But … Germany is big on demolition/replacement of housing stock? But always with better environmental standards. And most people rent their homes, and houses are depreciating assets.

@cstross @ChrisMayLA6 yes, hard agree

while literally every activity/process/object/phenomenon is measured against it's ability to be transmuted into money, it's going to be hard to solve our actual problems

@Talia @ChrisMayLA6 I keep saying only fully automatic luxury gay space communism will save us from climate change now, and I'm barely even joking …