Re-use, repurpose, re-manufacture

Recycling as a concept is nothing new in today’s society – for most of our lives we have been sorting our household rubbish and dropping stuff off at the local bottle or paper bank. But in building construction, it is both relatively new and at the same time actually very old, as this article will go on to explain. While recycling practices have been with us since time immemorial, what is actually new is the latest terminology: ‘circular economy’ – re-using and recycling materials and products (and refurbishing buildings) for as long as possible; ‘upcycling’ – a type of recycling that actually improves the material or product rather than diminishing its value; ‘Cradle to Cradle’ – actually a trademarked name for recycled products, but the idea is to mimic the natural life-cycles in the treatment of such waste and its re-use, in a sense, the continual re-birth of materials; and ‘urban mining’ – the recov