Table Of ContentBUILDING FROM WASTE
BUILDING
FROM
WASTE
RECOVERED MATERIALS
IN ARCHITECTURE
AND CONSTRUCTION
Dirk E. Hebel
Marta H. Wisniewska
Felix Heisel
Birkhäuser
Basel
Book design: Binocular, New York
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conTenTS
007 Introduction: Building from Waste
Dirk e. Hebel
marta H. Wisniewska
felix Heisel
021 City and Refuse: Self-reliant Systems and Urban Terrains
mitchell Joachim
027 Hands off: Urban Mining! A Plea for the Re-evaluation
of Substandard Housing
Jörg Stollmann
DenSifieD 033 Densified Waste Materials
ReconfiguReD 063 Reconfigured Waste Materials
TRanSfoRmeD 095 Transformed Waste Materials
DeSigneD 127 Designed Waste Materials
146 Organic Waste Design: A New Culture
of Designed Waste Products
Sascha Peters
culTivaTeD 151 Cultivated Waste Materials
Product Directory
172 Load-bearing Products
178 Self-supporting Products
180 Insulating Products
184 Waterproofing Products
187 Finishing Products
appendix
193 Notes
195 Illustration Credits
196 About the Authors and the Contributors
198 Index of Products and Projects
199 Index of Manufacturers and Designers
200 Acknowledgements
1 Open landfill in Addis
Ababa, Ethiopia.
Our economic system is based on the prin- Economic Cooperation and Development)
INTRODUCTION
ciple of the exhaustion of natural resources produce more solid waste than the other
for the purpose of production, entailing the 164 nations together. China is on a fast
BUILDING FROM WASTE
fabrication of waste. This system functions track to break this record; the World Bank
at the expense of our social integrity and estimates that China will produce more than
environmental sustainability. Images of the half of the total of solid waste worldwide
urban poor searching steaming landfills for by 2025.1 Looking at the map of the most
valuable items are iconic representations waste-generating nations in the world, two
of our modern life-style. In a dramatic way, readings are possible: either to see them as
the garbage sites show the entanglement of the biggest polluters, following the traditional
economic success and rapid urbanization understanding of waste; or to see them as
with social segregation into “haves” and countries with an enormous richness of
“have-nots”. It is also telling that this image resources. The latter perspective requires a
Dirk E. Hebel is almost exclusively to be found in urban different view of garbage production.
Marta H. Wisniewska agglomerations, where by far the majority
Felix Heisel of non-organic waste is produced. Instead Marc Angélil and Cary Siress, in their article
of being included in a metabolic cycle and “Re: Going Around in Circles, Regimes
flow model of goods and resources, waste of Waste”, acknowledge this huge potential:
is considered within a dead-end scenario “Waste and its meticulous handling are
of a linear process; to be literally buried valued as gifts, offered by society to itself.
from view – out of sight, out of mind – as a Where we turn the parable’s missed oppor-
formless substance that has no value and is tunity to our advantage, a modified economy
therefore covered by thick layers of earth or would be set into motion. Perhaps then we
burned to ashes. would come full circle in being sustained
by the constant transformation of matter
Looking, by contrast, at the waste products and energy at hand, without beginning and
reveals a completely different story. It without end.”2 Referring to Georges Bataille,3
is the story of a resource that is being the authors talk of waste as a gift that needs
wasted. 1.3 billion tons of municipal solid to be freed from its “pejorative stigma”. Their
waste are generated every year by cities call to understand waste as part of societies’
worldwide. This amount is expected to grow wealth follows, in fact, also an economic
to 2.2 million tons by 2025, i.e. within the principle: waste production is an investment
next ten years. Unsurprisingly, the 34 OECD that needs to be returned. So far, this invest-
countries (members of the Organization for ment is deadlocked and we seem to have
007
IntroductIon
lost the key to how to open its potential and
benefit from it as a life-long revenue. once
the waste is produced – i.e. when a natural
resource is transformed into a product with
a limited life span – society should be able to
make a profit of its constant reformulation.
Instead, today the beneficiaries of the way
we treat waste as a result of the exploitation
of natural resources are to be found in a Municipal solid waste
kg / person / day
black spot of our economic system; they are
>2.50
another by-product, so to say. 2.00-2.49
1.50-1.99
<1.49
Shadow Economy
No data
Strangely enough, criminal organizations
have had a strong interest and bond to
garbage for a very long time. It seems that
our way to suppress waste and enclose it heads of the casalesi Mafia clan, carmine Another example: the largest export good
in our subconsciousness generates a legal Schiavone, gave testimony to a parliamentary of the united States of America to china
vacuum where space can be claimed by investigation committee in rome. His is trash.5 this has to do with the growing
outlaws. For decades, the Italian Mafia has confession was so outrageous that the Italian problem of finding landfill spaces or new
been deeply involved in the waste business. government kept it classified until 2013: “‘We locations for incineration plants. there are
contracted by the public authorities, they are talking about millions of tons,’ Schiavone, countries that happily accept the trash
dump the waste that has been collected and formerly head of administration for the Mafia from other societies, especially when they
supposedly treated, on open land without any organization, told the parliamentarians. ‘I are paid for it. their understanding of
protection system, mixed with toxic and other also know that trucks came from Germany environmental protection or human health
contaminated substances. they even export carrying nuclear waste.’ the operations is less distinct. In the case of Ghana, one
the garbage to other locations, where rules, took place under the cloak of darkness of the main recipients of e-waste from all
regulations, and ethics are less rigid than in and were guarded by Mafiosi in military over the world, people move from rural
Europe. the bill has to be paid by the people police uniforms, he said. He showed Italian areas to scrap sites next to harbour zones
living close to the garbage sites and by the justice officials the locations of many of the to strip and burn electronic wastes in
immediate natural environment. An extreme dumpsites because, as he put it in 1997, the order to collect valuable metals such as
case is an area north of naples, also known people in those areas are at risk of ‘dying of aluminium and copper. to get to the metal
as “Land of Poison”. In 1997, one of the cancer within 20 years’.”4 inside, the plastic casings are burned on
2 Global map of per
capita solid municipal
waste production.
008
InTRODUCTIOn
LINEAR ECONOMY
The dominant economic model for our
current waste management has been
phrased by Annie Leonard, the author of the
film and book The Story of Stuff,9 as “Take,
Make, Waste”. This is not per se an unsus-
tainable principle, as it permits that
Known and suspected the resource “taken” would become the
routes of e-waste dumping
outcome of “wasting”. But this is not the
Source of E-Waste
case. In fact, we follow a linear process
Known Destination
Suspected Destination where the outcome of our consumption is not
No data valued as a resource, but seen as a product
excluded from the cycle of our economic
system – belonging neither to the natural
resources nor to the desired products.
open sites, releasing thick, black toxic potential of waste to be a substance of Absurdly enough, we pay our local authori-
fumes containing ingredients known to be value or even a resource for our economy ties to collect our trash, confirming that it
carcinogens. According to Al Jazeera,6 is somehow banned from our awareness. has no value nor is seen as a resource by
people working in the business make Therefore, we usually do not ask what us. Today, of the approximately 251 million
between two and three US Dollars a day, happens to it after it has left our home. tons of municipal solid waste generated in
just enough to survive. The Basel Convention Furthermore, the business of illegal waste the USA per year, only around 87 million tons
E-Waste Africa Programme7 estimates that disposal has become a powerful global are recycled. The remainder, roughly 164
approximately 40,000 tons of e-waste went economic player, as the example from Italy million tons, ends up in incineration plants
to Ghana in 2010, compared to the total shows. The environmental organization and landfills.10 This waste of waste is at the
for Africa of around 230,000 tons. This Legambiente claims that the business same time a dissipation of natural resources,
prosperity trash of Western societies will of black-market waste was over 16 billion considering alone the energy, water, and
continue to be shipped to Western Africa, Euros in Italy alone in 2012 generated from other materials that were needed (and
as long as the northern nations do not more than 11.6 million tons of illegally wasted) to produce from virgin resources
conceive of it as a rich resource. disposed waste substances.8 Compared to the items later discarded. The production
the Gross Domestic Product of the same of a plastic bag requires crude oil not only
Why does our society accept these circum- year, this represents almost 1% of Italy’s as the raw material but the same quantity
stances? The answer is very complex. The economic power. of oil to produce the energy needed for
3 Global map of e-waste
dumping routes.
009
InTRODUCTIOn
the manufacture of the bag. In total, one Linear metabolism – cities consume and pollute at a high rate
kilogram of CO is emitted for the production
2 Organic
of five average-sized plastic bags.11 Almost Food waste
half of this amount could be saved if we were
to start recycling our plastic waste materials Energy Inputs Human Outputs Emissions
habitats
instead of locking them away or burning
them to ashes, emitting even more CO2 and Goods Inorganic
toxic fumes. numbers are even higher in waste
other industries. Recycling steel saves 75% of
energy compared to the process generating it Circular metabolism – cities minimize new inputs and maximize recycling
from scratch. And to produce 1 ton of paper,
98 tons of natural resources are needed. But
large amounts of paper waste still end up as Recycled Organic
waste
trash, even though the recycling of this mater-
ial is one of the easiest processes we know
and could be part of a circular understanding
of the stock and flow of materials.12 Reduced
Renewable Inputs Human Outputs pollution
inputs habitats and waste
CIRCULAR ECONOMY
What we describe today as a circular or
metabolic economy has been rooted for Recycled Inorganic
waste
decades in the thinking of economists and
surprisingly enough also architects. In
the USA, landscape architect John T. Lyle
developed a theoretical concept in the late Illustrations based on: Cities for a Small Planet (Richard Rogers, 1996).
1970s in which communities are envisioned
that base their daily activities on living within of the Product-Life Institute in Geneva (and three R’s to product life cycles: Reuse, Repair,
the limits of available renewable resources Graduate of the Department of Architecture and Remanufacture (which, in the meantime,
and without causing environmental degrada- at the Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) have been renamed and given a fourth
tion. His work and vision, developed together in Zurich in 1971). Stahel had become a sibling – see further below). In his 1982 paper
with his students at Cal Poly Pomona pioneer in the field of sustainable thinking “The Product Life Factor”13 he advocated
University, found widespread interest due to by promoting the “service-life extension of the development, and application in the
the studies of Walter R. Stahel, co-founder goods”, and one of the first to introduce the industry, of new sustainable strategies and
4 Linear metabolism –
inputs equal outputs.
5 Circular metabolism –
minimized inputs and
outputs due to the concept
of a circular economy.
010
