Making Deconstruction Mainstream
Youngstown — Posted on April 23, 2009 at 8:07 pm
What do we have? Blight.
What have we lost? People.
What do we need? Deconstruction.
The need for deconstruction as a weapon in our fight against blight was made clear Thursday night on the second floor of the Ohio One building. David Bennink of RE-USE Consulting delivered a strong message (if in a lo-tech presentation) about the viability, indeed the necessity, of approaching neighborhood right-sizing through deconstruction.
Bennink uses a hybrid approach, with the deconstruction sensibilities and demolition efficiency. He emphasized tools and machines supporting people. Use people for processing the reclaimed materials at a safe distance from the action, and let the machines do as much as possible to support a small corps of workers inside the target facility.
He emphasized that buildings shouldn’t be judged by their appearance. Take each structure on its own merits, and investigate it fully before committing to the necessary approach. Of course economics will enter into it. So, examine the building materials closely. Bennink cited numerous cases where the value of buildings was greater than the apparent sum of its parts.
One case study showed a cinder block building without obvious recycling potential. Once he entered the structure, however, he saw wooden beams along the length and width of the roof, supported by even more massive beams.
"What do you see?"
The biggest eye-opener of the night was how policies can determine behavior in the case of dumping. Where significant costs are levied for dumping, people find alternatives. Dumping fees can range from $30 to more than $80 per ton. What are they in Youngstown? $15 per ton. Why would anyone choose to recycle when dumping is a bargain?
Deconstruction can be an affordable option, and Bennink’s goal is to make it a mainstream choice for property dispositions. This can be accomplished through:
- Identifying valuable materials
- Using best and most efficient methods
- Concurrently deconstructing and marketing materials
- Leveraging community resources
- Ensuring owner assistance (or insistence)
- Balancing people and tools/equipment
Why deconstruction?
- Can provide twenty times more jobs than demolition
- Builds skills for workers they can parlay into future jobs
- Keeps Youngstown’s legacy of homes at home (instead of shipping it away to West Virginia, et. al.)
- Creates value-added markets from waste materials
- Reduces waste
Resources:
- Building Materials Reuse Association (BMRA)
- Buffalo ReUSE
- A Piece of Cleveland
- ReFIND Furniture: Sustainable Designs Using Reclaimed Materials
- ReSOURCE building materials in Boulder
- Building Value non-profit re-use center in Cincy
Popularity: 17% [?]
Tags: 2010, economy, green
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5 Comments
Cheap dumping fees aren’t even our biggest problem. Most of the time, when a house in Youngstown is demolished, it is just crushed into the basement and covered with dirt. So, there are no dumping fees.
I think you miss the point . You are saying dumping fees are $0 , not $15 . That makes dumping in Youngstown even cheaper& validates the argument !
Burying a building in the ground isn’t good environmental practice & it is banned in most places . The waste should be buried in a properly connstructed sanitary landfill or recycled . In some places , they even recycle the whole building by placing it on special transporter trucks & carrying it away in sections . With brick buildings , the brick siding is taken apart before removal & reassembled at the new site . I think America as a whole thinks of brownfield remediation as akin to “rewarding failure” . The belief appears to be – or to have been – that once neighborhhoods & their residents & buildings have started to “go bad” , they should be left alone to fully decay while good neighborhoods get started elsewhere . The world’s most powerful economy ever could sustain these beliefs , but now new thinking is called for .
I sense that you’re both on the same page. J.R. is just saying this is what’s being done, not how it should be done.
Wow. That’s sobering; I had no idea. Good to see you last night.