Lego House

There is such a thing as 'deconstruction'. 

Earlier this week I was in bed and I became aware of an industrial sound. I couldn't explain the specifics, but I could tell that it was some big machinery clumsily breaking down a structure close by. The house across the street is due to be redeveloped. I wondered if they were knocking it down. My mind started building the scene; I found myself imaging what it looked like inside. I wondered if it had timber floors or cladding. I wondered if they'd removed the fittings from the doors and the windows. I wondered if they take out the wiring and plumbing. My knowledge of the processes of demolition is basically non-existent, so it was all projection.

Then I was wondering if they would be salvaging anything and I thought about asking them for curiosity's sake to find out if/how often they do reuse/recycle the materials they're removing. When I found the source there was nobody on site. Australia has, on average, the biggest houses on earth, but looking at the fragmented pieces of the classic Melbourne home got me thinking about something much smaller. Lego.

Nobody would build a house from Lego, detail it with little battery-powered lights and hand-painted wallpaper, and then crush it and bin it. That would be crazy, that stuff is so expensive!! I know Lego is valuable because I pay for the little pieces. If I saw a child play with it then smash it I'd be stunned, and convinced that they'd been spoiled to the point of having an absent sense of value. I realised that I didn't feel the same way seeing the blunt destruction of a building, and the increasingly common flare of disappointment with my own thinking turned up.

I did some research. It turns out there are some little doconstruction businesses who very successfully take-apart residential and small industrial structures. They divert a high percentage of waste from landfill and salvage a maximum of reusable materials. One difference between their idea of reuse, versus post-demolition recycling, is that some of the materials can be used in their current form again (instead of being downcycled and broken up for aggregate or woodchip). However these businesses are relatively niche. Why is that?

This is what was left of the demolition later that day.

Nobody would build a house from Lego, detail it with little battery-powered lights and hand-painted wallpaper, and then crush it and bin it. That would be crazy, that stuff is so expensive!! I know Lego is valuable because I pay for the little pieces. If I saw a child play with it then smash it I'd be stunned, and convinced that they'd been spoiled to the point of having an absent sense of value. I realised that I didn't feel the same way seeing the blunt destruction of a building, and the increasingly common flare of disappointment with my own thinking turned up.

You build something with Lego, you take it apart, you use it again - it costs too much to waste. Within real houses, aside from a stack of potentially reusable materials, they have the embedded energy of mining, deforestation, processing, transportation, all manner of labour... I know a little about construction, but I'd literally never heard of deconstruction. I've heard of demolition, but 'deconstruction' - as the concept of a meticulous and opposite process to original construction - was a new idea for me.

I did some research. It turns out there are some little doconstruction businesses who very successfully take-apart residential and small industrial structures. They divert a high percentage of waste from landfill and salvage a maximum of reusable materials. One difference between their idea of reuse, versus post-demolition recycling, is that some of the materials can be used in their current form again (instead of being downcycled and broken up for aggregate or woodchip). However these businesses are relatively niche. Why is that?

I know it isn't economically viable to pay the labour of deconstruction, but why? When did our supply of raw material become so limitless that it would be the standard option to do anything else? It didn't. A century ago we would have deconstructed and reused. In developing nations they still deconstruct. So what are we doing?

I found some wonderful information on councils and regions applying regulations which increase the quantity of construction and demolition (frequently shortened to C&D) material being recycled instead of landfilled. Trying to constantly develop technology and practices to improve this has been a focus for different councils and consultant companies, and they've made inspiring progress with a handful of recurring issues.

The main, continual problems seemed to be:

- toxic contamination (asbestos, lead paint, timber treatments)

- mixing of materials/difficulty in separation

- attachment to traditional practise

- need for education about reusing reclaimed materials instead of common and easy option

These problems can be solved with increased interest, investment, and development of markets for salvaged materials.

Although the potential of construction/deconstruction may not seem relevant to you at the moment, the practise of designing for end-of-life, with an opportunity to recover as many resources as possible at the end of the first product lifecycle, is a good and applicable practise for any area of design. It can also be used as a mindful selection principle for any sort of product, from unpackaged foodstuffs to natural, ethically sourced clothing, and toiletries which are free from chemicals and plastics. 

Now deconstruction and material salvage is something I'd certainly bear in mind if I was ever involved in the process of building, removing or renovating a home, and I'm glad it's a work in progress in many places.

Landfill waste has been playing heavily on my mind lately.  It just seems like the most apathetic solution to the amount we generate. An extra layer of the problem - exporting waste to other countries to contaminate their natural areas (with products they sometimes haven't even reached the ability of owning firsthand) - is something I'll try to expand on later. But paying attention to the products you use and the potential for them to be reused, recycled, composted or reworked when you're finished with them is a switched-on thinking process for modern consumers, and the earliest stage in avoiding contributing to landfill in the first place.

Full Circle vs. 'The Way It Is'.

This morning I raided our bin for misplaced recyclables. I got into all sorts of mystery bin juice and slush and slime, speckled with fragments of easter egg wrapping, and emerged from the bin-swamp as a proud, sparkling, sopping diver, armed with a stack of recyclable, compostable and reusable things. I didn't think twice.

The disconnection between user and product is high on my radar at the moment. For me it is one of those Pandora's Box niggles; once you've picked up on it enough times it's impossible to stop seeing or ignore it. There's an unsurpising distance between you and the end result of your own by-products when the information is usually brought to you like a punch in the face. Show me a picture of a landfill site and I will be genuinely horrified by the extent of human excess and recklessness. "We are SO gross, look at what we've done!" - but the feeling is distinctly shock, not a measure of guilt, or any sense of having to right a personal wrong. I have never seen a landfill site in real life.

Landfill, incineration, recycling or reusing - these are the main destinations for everything we consume, but nobody is here for a garbage lesson. Shifting blame and lamenting poor past choices is hardly the most useful response, but more harmful than that is the response of 'that's just the way it is'. Every system in place is human-defined. No indisputible law of rubbish directs our old plastic to gyres, thousands of miles out to sea. When using your things - products and the packaging surrounding them, your shampoo bottle, your food, the water from your shower, your kettle, your shoes, your laptop - try to really see it as yours, something you've generated, something you should work out how to dispose of well. Recycling is a better direction than landfill, but it is not the ultimate solution and has many of its own problems. Well-informed selection, resourceful reuse and planning is a practical step in the right direction.

If the debris of your own consumption is something you notice but aren't sure how to go about managing, I cannot recommend enough reading Bea Johnson's 'Zero Waste Home'. It was one of the first resources which gave me really strong tips on how to avoid generating rubbish in the first place, and it really expanded my awareness from the scope of the health benefits of not being surrounded by trash, to the freeing feeling of living more minimally without the heavy anchor of 'stuff' we just do not need. You can visit her website at http://www.zerowastehome.com.

The four most basic and achievable changes I could personally recommend to avoid making new garbage are:

- investing in a reusable coffee cup and bottle and taking them everywhere. I recently used my cup on a flight to avoid those awful little disposable cups. It has a screw-on lid and when we hit turbulence the guy next to me leaned over and said "I see someone's a seasoned flyer!" - wrong, but I was pleased to find a second benefit of having it. I just can't take the one-swig-and-see-you-later approach to anything anymore. Better yet, just sit down instead of taking away. If I want to have a coffee at the start of the day I try to take a little bit of time to sit and enjoy it, and not get a paper cup in the first place. It feels better.

- planning for shopping and taking your own bags, and not only for groceries. Plastic bags should be a thing of the past by now. Furthermore, it doesn't have to be part of the experience to take 50 huge, labelled bags with teeny contents home from a successful day of retail therapy, if that's what you're into. Be more discerning about what you buy in the first place - another nod to 'Zero Waste Home' for advice - and buying unwrapped and/or bulk frequent-use products builds on this.

- using recycled toilet paper - wiping butts with fresh paper has to be one of the most obnoxious, unnecessary actions, and 100% certified recycled TP is no longer the scratchy, poor quality version of yesteryear. A great friend of mine once pointed out to me that we can't make trees. We simply cannot imitate everything a tree can do naturally, which makes cutting them down for paper seem incredibly shortsighted. Pandora's Box again - now I try to replace any need for fresh paper with a 100% recycled alternative wherever possible, starting with the bathroom.

- composting food waste. I'm sure even the most environmentally-uninterested person has unwanted familiarity with the word 'methane' and the term 'greenhouse gas'. Breakdown of organic waste in landfill is responsible for a surprising amount of methane production. To go to the micro-chef effort of making up gourmet dishes on school nights only to trash the scraps and cook the planet - it's an ugly result of a beautiful process and a waste of potential energy and nutrients. Even if you don't use compost you can give it away. There are so many options for doing this in a way which suits your circumstances now, including indoor, smell-free composters for the delicate users, and I'm sure most UK residences have those little food-waste bins which make it even easier.

 -These guys are doing recycled toilet paper so much justice, and I love their little red 'emergency roll' - http://au.whogivesacrap.org

Much of this deserves/requires expanding on. I've developed my own way of deciding what to buy and what to avoid, but I'll get to sharing more of that in later posts. When you start looking for ways to reuse and responsibly dispose of what you have you'll find that there are many options. But 'the way it is' is down to you, it feels good to give it your own direction.

For me, learning is the way I stay connected to my surroundings. It makes me feel grounded to recognise and understand what I see and the things I do. Cultivating a sense of responsibility for my own products and their lifespan has branched from this, and has been a greater benefit to my own wellbeing than it may even be to the planet. Learning a little bit about where your things come from and where they end up is useful, holistic knowledge, and has all manner of emotional, financial and planet-friendly benefits.