Talking Trash

"...if everyone lived like Americans, Earth could sustain only 1.4 billion people."

"...erecting an average home of 2,000 square feet results in roughly 8,000 pounds of construction waste and 136,000,000 tons of demolition waste are tossed into landfills in the United States every year."

That means 4,610,000 standard shipping containers of 40 feet in length!!! What does that mean for architects and designers when the basis of what we do it utilizing materials to build a project? We rely on a steady stream of materials that not only get discarded at the end of their life cycle, they also come from somewhere and require a lot of energy and resources to be produced. Based on the premise that the world is a finite element and we are already running beyond its capacity, it is time to rethink how we design.
A great example comes from the Netherlands (of course!). Jan Jongert and Jeroen Bergsma of 2012Architects have designed a house where 60% of the structure is comprised of reused materials found within a 9 mile radius from the building site. This number goes up to 90% when it comes to the interior. Some of the materials include broken umbrellas and chopped up billboards.

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