"Nature: What are we learning from nature to help us build resilient and sustainable communities?"

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What should we do with that old building? Turn it into a park! From the American Society of Landscape Architects sustainable landscapes series, this animation covers how to reuse construction material to minimize greenhouse gasses and other waste.

Related: Greensburg: A Model to Rebuild from Catastrophes

Traditional ways of constructing buildings create pollution and waste. Building materials contain vast amounts of embedded energy. According to Architecture 2030, building construction and materials account for 5.5 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions. In addition, while exact numbers aren’t available, trucks and cranes transporting and installing materials at construction sites produce considerable amounts of greenhouse gas emissions.
(Source: Architecture 2030)

Typically, materials from torn-down buildings and sites are carted off to the landfill. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency says only 40 percent of building and construction material is now “recycled, reused, or sent to waste-to-energy facilities, while the remaining 60 percent of the materials is sent to landfills.” Many sustainable architects, landscape architects, and construction firms are now moving towards a more sustainable construction process to reduce waste and greenhouse gas emissions. (Source: Environmental Protection Agency)

In a sustainable reconstruction, building materials are reused or recycled, dramatically reducing waste. For example, a new park can be created out of old building materials. Once the materials have been separated, some are kept at the construction site and reprocessed. Reclaimed soils, concrete rubble, glass, wood, and steel can be reused or recycled to serve new functions, reducing greenhouse gas emissions in the process. With climate change, any new construction methods that help landscape architects avoid producing additional emissions are a major benefit both to the project and society as a whole. In a sustainable landscape, everything old is made new again. (Source: Reuse Alliance)

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2 Responses to “From Industrial Wasteland to Community Park”


  1. On November 10th, 2011 at 4:22 pm Jamie Hestekin Said:

    Bioremediation is a great idea and this is a fun application of it. I do have a couple of concerns, however. One, what would happen if the contaminants are heavy metals? The heavy metals would not be cleaned up, in fact, they would be concentrated by the plant materials. Most organics this should work with but the sites would have to be chosen carefully. Two, I am not sure that legally the idea would take off. I think the owners of these sites, regulated by Cradle to Grave, would rather keep them abandoned than risk someone moving in and potentially have something happen to them that could result in big lawsuits. Maybe there is a way to work around it, but that is something that would definitely have to be considered.


  2. On November 28th, 2011 at 3:10 pm Jessica Hellmann Said:

    I like the incorporation of the old equipment into the new park, new landmark. This is important because building removal can be a significant cost and generates a lot of materials that require disposal. There are many regions of our country that could use this technique and could therefore regain opportunities for future economic development (e.g., rust belt of the Midwest).

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