Hello class. You should have just watched the video from Annie Leonard called Story of Stuff. And in that we're talking about, or that film was talking about, the embodied energy that goes into materials and all of the different reasons why waste is created. And it can get really complicated when we're trying to make smart, informed decisions. So, for example, let's take a look at steel cases, think chair.
In looking at a chair, we can't just, you know, we can look at the chair itself as a whole object, but really that is made out of a variety of different types of materials. So there may be steel in part of the construction and in the base. There's different types of polyethylene and polypropylene that is in the sponge backing of the chair back.
Plus there's also different types of materials that are in the fibers of the seat cover. So we really need to look at all of our materials and especially if they're made out of components. When trying to determine what the life cycle impact is of an object, especially one with components, we're looking at a host of things. So how did each one of those components contribute to global warming? You know, the steel versus the fabric versus the cushion versus the aluminum, you know, how did it?
contribute to any acid acidification or a host of other things that we look at when we look at life cycle assessment. So it's looking at all of the components and their their embodied energy but also then putting that back together to arrive at what the life cycle assessment of a chair is. We've talked about this term in an earlier module, but the notion of embodied energy. So this means that an object or a product, it's the sum of all of the energy that it took to make that product, from fuel to the manpower to any sort of human labor that had to go into it. all of those different types of things.
So the embodied energy really talks about the sum of energy, again, that is necessary for the entire life cycle. There may be a certain amount of manpower to create it, but then to maintain it, you have to be able to labor. So looking at embodied energy as being, again, energy across the entire life cycle. In this example, we're looking at a few different types of material, from concrete, hardwood, linen, glass, steel, and polyester.
And each one of those is represented on this graph as to how much embodied energy it has. We might be surprised to see that polyester actually is really, really high on the embodied energy list and part of that let's just compare polyester to the the blue bar which is sewn hardwood They both have an embodied energy footprint however, let's say from harvesting Harvesting wood is not nearly as disruptive as drilling for Petroleum which is what polyester is made of Polyester is made of petroleum byproducts that we also drill to get oil out of the ground. And it's really made from fossil fuels in a sense. So we can look at it as there's a comparison there. There's also an embodied energy on what happens to the material once it is thrown away.
So wood is biodegradable. It can... return to natural elements that can then be absorbed back into the ecosystem.
However, polyester has much higher embodied energy. Polyester doesn't break down and biodegrade the way that wood does. So again, The point is that this has to do with a whole life cycle. So, you know, a lot of times people will confuse the term for embodied energy versus carbon footprint.
You know, a carbon footprint is really the sum of all the greenhouse gases that are emitted by the full cycle of a project, a product, sorry. Whereas embodied energy, again, is the sum of all the energy needed to... produce the project product and some of that may be polluting and some of that may not be so it's important to understand the difference between these two so like human labor would be part of embodied energy but not necessarily carbon footprint this is a chart that demonstrates construction waste management so on the far left side you have a a blocky building site.
And on the other side, on the right side of the image, you see, you know, waste can go to the landfill. And at the bottom, we've got raw materials. So, you know, let's say we are demolishing a building site. Where does that waste go? And there's a couple of different options.
We're trying to do everything we can to Or we want to do everything we can to block that waste from going to the landfill. And we can do it in a couple of ways, which we'll get into shortly. But things like reusing building materials on the site. You know, you can use crumbled concrete as infill right there on the building site. You can donate, going now from the arrows from the top to the bottom.
We could donate building materials that were demolished from the site to some adjacent neighboring site that may be constructing. We could send materials to a salvage yard for other people then to buy and use in their own projects. We could send materials to a recycling center. Have them turn it into materials that will be made into brand new materials again We could send certain items back to the manufacturer You know so that they can deal with it, which we'll talk a little bit more about But there's a lot of different ways for us to avoid Sending waste to the landfill in the first place, you know and really looking at materials enough all of their components can help us analyze better ways of dealing with waste.
Some of the best ways to deal with waste is to reduce, reuse, recycle, and repair. We're going to look at every single one of these. So reducing the amount of waste we need in the first place. We can reuse or repurpose materials and giving it new life.
We can recycle materials that can then be created into brand new materials. Or we can repair things that we have now rather than tossing them out. Let's take a closer look at the reduce part of the equation. One easy way to reduce the amount of waste, especially in design and construction, is being able to design with standardized industry components in mind. So if we know that drywall comes in 4 foot by 8 foot sheets, we might want to consider standardizing the height of our walls so that those are also 4 by 8 feet tall, rather than trying to make...
them 4x9, which then means we're going to be creating waste for those components that might need to be cut off. Or you can even do a certain amount of math to be able to reduce the amount of material waste based on these industrial size components. We've looked at this as a main strategy, but we should bring it up here again. This is by far one of the biggest ways to reduce the amount of waste, material waste.
By building smaller units and buildings, we can really lower the amount of embodied energy because it will take less materials, less energy, less land, less maintenance all around. So reducing size cascades across everything. And again, we looked at this slide prior.
Another strategy is reusing or repurposing. So this is different than recycling. A lot of times people get those two terms confused.
But reusing means that we are going to repurpose. So to reuse is to use an item more than once. You can even reuse it for a different purpose or the same function than it was intended.
Here's an example from a project I worked on, and it's the headquarters, the newer headquarters of the Audubon Society. The Audubon Society is a bird conservancy organization. They lined the core of their building, of their commercial interior office space, with barn wood that had been...
salvaged and then finished off from upstate New York and then they brought it to use in this office space. So they reused the material itself. Here's another fun example.
This is the Google's office space. They ended up reusing a very typical New York skyline element of a water tower that one will find all throughout New York and especially Brooklyn. So as they were constructing their building or their new office space, they had a water tower that was on top.
And so they ended up bringing that inside the building, cutting a hole in it and reusing the structure to be a nice little sitting nook. for people to go in and relax and have lunch in and things like that. So even though it's not used as a water tower anymore, this is still a great example of material reuse.
Here's another example of a company I worked with called USM Modular Furniture. Now what they had created was a whole style based off of reuse. They create these storage units and tables that are made from identical components. What is great about this company is that it's very easy to reconfigure these units in any form that you want. So let's say you bought it and you had the installers install it in this huge wall unit.
But then 10 years later, you decide to move to a different office space and this storage unit is not going to fit in your new office. Well, the way that this is designed, it can be reconfigured in another form or shape. So you could actually take a section off.
And really just by standardizing these small little round input holes, so they use the same components again and again. This allows a customer to not just throw it away and buy something new, but they're able to reuse it again and again. So this has been actually built in to the design. Also, the... The fronts are easy to change out with the manufacturer to get different colors and things like that.
So you can create upgrade very easily. Another great example is a movement that we call design for disassembly. So this is when a manufacturer consciously creates a product that can be used for a specific purpose. When it's done with its useful life, it can easily be taken apart and broken down into its components.
That allows for one to recycle the elements easier, or some companies even have what's called a take-back program. So the manufacturer themselves may actually take the product back, be able to disassemble it in such a way that then they can... in a way that they've designed so that they can easily separate the steel from the aluminum and melt it back down and make brand new chairs from it.
So again, designed for disassembly, where it can easily be taken apart. And then... and then also companies that have a take back program.
Thanks.