New buildings are rising every day with new sustainable features and energy efficient standards. However, it’s important to remember there is another, equally important way, of adapting green methods into architecture: renovations.
You may be wondering how renovating an old, energy-inefficient house could be better than building a brand new, state of the art green building. Clearly, an old building will require more compromise on methods and materials. But there are two large advantages to renovation which will more than offset this compromise:
- There will be far less landfill waste than a tear down.
- The bulk of the construction is already in place, ready to be REUSED – the highest/best form of recycling.
Reduce, Reuse, Recycle
We all know the old phrase, “reduce, reuse, recycle.” These three R’s help us remember how to be responsible with our building waste management.
- Reduce: Limit the things we buy and produce in the first place
- Reuse: When we do buy and produce, make sure we get use of them over a long period of time.
- Recycle: When it is time to get rid of something, find a way to process the waste into other goods.
In regard to the life cycle of a building, you can see how Reduce, Reuse, Recycle as a concept comes into play. Renovating a historic building, as opposed to tearing it down, is distinctly in the "reuse" category. If the building already exists, we should not be wasteful and destroy the building unnecessarily. Instead, we should reuse it as much as possible.
Embodied Carbon
Embodied carbon refers to the carbon dioxide created from an entire lifecycle of a building. Creating construction materials, transporting the materials to the site, demolishing the building, and transporting the waste to a landfill all produce carbon dioxide. As you can imagine, the embodied carbon will add up.
When taking embodied carbon into consideration, suddenly it becomes clear that the amount of energy it would take to tear down and build a new building is significantly less than renovation. Renovating a building instead of building new will prevent waste of materials and will limit the need for transportation of materials.
Creating Care in the Community
While the main point of this article is to focus on the green aspect of renovation vs. teardown, it is also important to recognize that renovating historic architecture not only helps save our environment, but it also has a great cultural importance.
Preserving the historic buildings of an area gives the community a sense of history and pride. When the people in a community feel proud of where they live, it motivates the people to take care of it.
All in all, renovating a building is a win/win when it comes to sustainable building and preserving the historic culture of the community it resides.