Week 5 Recycling of building materials

（Source: Google image, 2016）

In the process of dismantling old buildings or building damage caused by natural disasters, a large number of waste bricks, concrete, wood, metal and other construction waste will be produced. If they can be used as a building material again, into a cycle of building resources, can not only protect the environment and reduce the impact on the environment, but also can save a lot of construction funds and resources.

Bricks: according to the different waste brick materials, they can be used in retaining wall, pond transformation, garden paving, conservation and restoration of historic buildings etc. For example, in March 2007, a project located around the Olympic venues named Shougang Laoshan district environmental improvement program. In construction period, they reuse the bricks as wall masonry materials to reduce the cost of engineering construction. In addition, the construction workers also reuse these bricks as pond reconstruction masonry, a total of 519.1m3 and saving more than 80000 yuan.

Concrete: Crushing the waste concrete to reuse them as the raw material of the new concrete. This can not only solve the problem of environmental pollution caused by waste concrete, but also save the mine resources and reduce the cost of the project.

Wood: wood is a typical traditional building material and its grow is affected by the natural environment, a lot of deforestation will destroy the ecological environment. According to the different methods adopted, the direct reuse of old building wood includes recycling, applied to indoor and architectural decoration etc. For better quality of scrap wood can be classification according to the market demand and processed into a variety of available timber. On the other hand, at present, waste wood applied to the interior and architectural decoration to show a great affinity for the new concept of environmental protection to the people.

Reference List:

Du, D. (2016). Reuse of resources in the reconstruction of old buildings. [online] Wenku.baidu.com. Available at: http://wenku.baidu.com/view/b1c7870a0740be1e650e9aca.html?from=search [Accessed 6 April 2016].