Recycling 4: Now what?

After living, breathing, writing and researching post-consumer recycling, I have taken a break from thinking about it. However, I continue to catch myself reminding people which recycling bin to use, or to not throw a recyclable product in the garbage. I am still a compliant recycling citizen, but I am also an educated citizen who has asked questions about what happens post-curbside.


But, like one of the recyclers asked me: "what does this have to do with an Architecture Masters?"


Good question, sir. 

The goal was to use the small-scale process of post-consumer recycling to create a procedure for analysis of recycling processes in general. I would then adapt this procedure to analyze the recycling and reuse of building components. With this analysis in hand, I planned to format it in such a way that the public could understand it, and set it free.


It was a decent plan. Unfortunately, the "small-scale" process turned into an enormous undertaking with a number of unanswered questions. Parts are still useful tools which I can use later to apply to structural steel. The greatest success, however, was that I now have more realistic expectations of accumulating research within the industrial realm.


So where do you go from here?

If you have the willpower, read the essay "Recycling 3: Resource Accounting" or at least scan through it and look at the images. If you have even more interest, check out some of the references at the bottom. Most of all, share what you learn. Be vigilant in your recycling of glass, steel, and aluminum. Use less Styrofoam. Limit your plastic use, since only some of it can be reused for equivalent products after recycling. 


Where am I going from here?


With a renewed interest in the outgoing stream of our consumption-driven lives, I may engage in even further investigation into post-consumer recycling. Even more likely, however, is that I will take my research to the larger scale of buildings. 

There are many different materials in any given building. What do we do when a building no longer meets our needs? Do we renovate it? Put an addition on it? Or tear it down and start from scratch? What is the destination of the outgoing materials? Where did the incoming materials come from? There is the potential for a closed-loop system if we put in the time and effort. That's what I'll head towards.

"Double, double toil and trouble; Fire burn, and caldron bubble."
I found this image of an Electric Arc Furnace and couldn't help but post it. Perhaps the recycling of steel is just a modern form of witchcraft performed over a cauldron.