During the 2006 World Planners Congress in Vancouver, delegates raised an important question during a round-table talk on sustainable urbanization. They asked, if we have policies to recycle items as small as pop bottles and tin cans, why don't we have strategies to reuse or recycle items as large as buildings and even whole parts of cities?*
It is a vital question. It's also a good starting point for this issue of Alternatives because discussion on sustainability has largely neglected the environmental implications of decisions to demolish old buildings. .
It is a vital question. It's also a good starting point for this issue of Alternatives because discussion on sustainability has largely neglected the environmental implications of decisions to demolish old buildings. .
Every brick in a building required the burning of fossil fuel in its manufacture, and every piece of lumber was cut and transported using energy. As long as the building stands, that energy is there, serving a useful purpose. Trash a building and you trash its embodied energy too. Furthermore, we burn new fuel to replace the structure. It has been estimated that the embodied energy that is lost with the demolition of a typical small urban house is equivalent to the energy saved by recycling 1.34 million aluminum cans. .