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Nexii Building Solutions Inc. has become the first construction manufacturing company in North America to achieve the Total Resource Use and Efficiency (TRUE) Gold Certification for Zero Waste for its Squamish Manufacturing Plant in British Columbia, Canada. Administered by Green Business... View full entry
A new project from New York-based duo New Affiliates is making headlines in the Queens neighborhood of Edgemere, where architects Ivi Diamantopoulou and Jaffer Kolb have invented a radical new way of reusing one of the design processes’ most wasteful customs – discarded architectural mock-ups... View full entry
Megadeveloper Lendlease is one of the entities behind a new study into the use of mushrooms as a means of decarbonizing construction waste through their application on discarded asphalt roofing shingles. The company teamed with Rubicon Technologies, Mycocycle, and Rockwood Sustainable Solutions to... View full entry
Let’s play Spot The Difference, urban edition. You’re on West 47th Street in Hell’s Kitchen, a Manhattan neighborhood known for its industrial vibe. Like much of the area, the street is lined with brick buildings; despite some color variations, the facades mostly look the same. There is, however, one striking difference. — Fast Company
The difference lies within the gray brick facade of The West, a new residential building that is made up of nearly 580,000 pounds of demolition and industrial waste. The architects, Dutch firm Concrete, teamed up with Amsterdam-based company StoneCycling to use their recycled bricks patented... View full entry
Two buckets. That’s all that was left at the end of the day when Nexii, a concrete alternative start-up, tore down one of its first demonstration projects. A 700-square-foot showroom and model home displaying Nexii’s building technology was constructed in 2019 near Vancouver to prove the buildability of the new material, which has far lower emissions than conventional concrete. — Fast Company
Combining their sturdy panel-based construction system with their concrete alternative, Nexiite, which produces about 35% lower carbon emissions than conventional concrete, Nexii was able to deconstruct the showroom in six days, saving almost every part of the building for future reconstruction... View full entry
When old office blocks are demolished, their steel frames are typically smelted down to be recycled, emitting thousands of tonnes of carbon in the process. But at One Broadgate, the steel beams that once framed the London headquarters of inter-dealer broker TP Icap Plc will instead be salvaged from the site and recycled by developer Fabrix. Chief Executive Officer Clive Nichol says the example proves it’s possible to “apply the circular economy to structural elements of buildings.” — Bloomberg Green
Fabrix has purchased 139 tons of steel from the contractor behind the demolition of One Broadgate and plans to use it on other projects in London. The process, known as urban mining, recovers and resells raw materials from waste products. Related on Archinect: How 'Anthropocene mining'... View full entry
The inaugural Material Lab Prize is an initiative that aims to foster the study of materials and material reuse. A $1k grant is given to the student that best exemplifies innovative ways to reuse and redesign waste. According to Pratt, "the prize seeks to celebrate and exhibit student work... View full entry
What should we do with industrial sites after they have fulfilled their original purpose? Considering the fact that so many of the now disused sites are so close to city centers, the answer to this question can determine the quality of city life for many places around the world. Landschaftspark... View full entry
Since 2016, the Rotterdam-based research and design studio The New Raw has been experimenting with using plastic waste to create public furniture. Through the 'Print Your City' project—which just launched its first Zero Waste Lab in Thessaloniki, Greece—the firm turns public waste into raw... View full entry
With the increase in festival events and attendance, one company strives to fix the waste problem these highly attended festivals make. Based in Christchurch, Dorset, Above All C6(n) is a sustainable technology company that is using recycled plastic water bottles to create sustainable alternatives... View full entry
Researchers say India could alleviate its growing shortage of sand, which is needed for concrete, by partially replacing it with waste plastic.
Research carried out by the University of Bath in the UK, and India’s Goa Engineering College, has found that concrete made with an admixture of ground-up plastic bottles is almost as strong as traditional concrete mixtures.
— globalconstructionreview.com
With India's rapid urbanization, concrete construction has dramatically increased causing a shortage in the country's sand used to make the building material. Mixing in plastic bottles focuses on solving both the issue of a sand shortage and the accumulation plastic waste on the streets. While... View full entry
Wasteful, inefficient, and pointlessly expensive to operate: most of Donald Trump's namesake properties, as well as his son-in-law Jared Kushner's new "666" edifice, are oozing energy by virtue of their poor design and indifference toward conservation. A report by the IBTimes noted that:As of... View full entry
Each day, New York’s public garbage trucks collect nearly 7,000 tonnes of residential mixed solid waste. After finishing their routes, most of these trucks will deposit the garbage in one of New York’s waste transfer stations located throughout the city. From there, the garbage will eventually be loaded on to a barge or train and carried as far as 600 miles to its final stop. For most of New York’s mixed solid waste (about 80% of it by tonnage), this last stop will be a landfill. — the Guardian
"The remaining 20% will end up at a waste-to-energy plant, where it will be incinerated and converted into energy."For more on the infrastructure of waste, follow these links:Shitting Architecture: the dirty practice of waste removalGeotectura's ZeroHome turns waste into... View full entry
"Humanity went through stone age, went through ice age, and today, going through plastic age. We need to find solution,” explains Robert Bezeau, the man intent on amending the global reach of plastic waste by building houses out of it. A transplant to Panama from Montreal, he has started... View full entry
Malaysia has too much sewage sludge and not enough concrete, a problem which naturally prompted an "aha!" moment among researchers. By burning and drying wet sewage sludge cake and then grinding and sieving the dry cake to produce Domestic Waste Sludge Powder (DWSP), the Malaysian researchers are... View full entry
