material BANKS

In the beginning of the 21st century, Reburg, like many cities, suffered from wasteful construction and demolition works. More than 30% of all waste generated within Reburg originated from construction and demolition works. Nowadays, Reburg has adopted a circular building practice, which is aimed at getting resources back in such a way that they can be used again for other applications. Two strategies can be put forward to achieve this:

Urban Mining, by recovering building materials and building components from existing buildings for low- or high value recycling/reuse, even though these buildings were initially not designed to be easily deconstructed.
Urban Metabolism, by designing, installing and re-installing building components in such a way that they are used over and over again.

In both strategies, buildings are considered as materials banks, temporary repositories of valuable building products that can be recovered for other applications as well. Only a limited amount of primary resources have to be imported to keep the cycle running and only a limited amount of materials end up as waste that needs to be disposed.

material banks Source: BAMB