Deconstruction: Salvaging Yesterday's Buildings for Tomorrow's Sustainable Communities
Deconstruction is the process of carefully dismantling a building in order to reuse and recycle as much of the building’s components as possible. By contrast, traditional demolition destroys and discards almost all of a building’s components. While demolition is often viewed as quicker and cheaper, the practice actually has high hidden costs measured in its environmental, health and economic impacts. Deconstruction is labor intensive (which creates jobs) and provides materials that support local and regional businesses.
Although published in 2000, this 36-page report by the Institute for Local Self Reliance (ILSR) is still a useful resource for communities seeking to understand and to promote deconstruction locally. The report emphasizes partnerships among government agencies, non-profits, and for-profit entities. It explains how deconstruction can be used to strengthen locally based, environmentally sound, locally-based economic development.
The report discusses changes in federal policy that helped to create opportunities for deconstruction, especially for redevelopment agencies, job training and employment agencies, community development corporations, and housing authorities. The report provides background on the deconstruction field, summarizes case studies, identifies common obstacles and solutions, and discusses different approaches to implementation.
This document serves as a good primer on deconstruction. Similar to curbside recycling programs, the success of deconstruction depends on the availability of markets willing to buy salvaged materials.
The collection, reprocessing, marketing, and use of materials that were diverted or recovered from the solid waste stream.
