Making construction sustainable by reusing materials

Students from EPFL's rebuiLT project have recovered components from a 1970s building scheduled to be demolished. © 2023 rebuiLT/PJ Renaud CC-BY-SA 4. One way to lighten the construction industry's heavy carbon footprint is to reuse existing materials - an approach being explored by numerous researchers. Here's a look at some of their ideas, ahead of an upcoming speaker event at EPFL. Some 17 million tons of construction materials (excluding excavated soil) are thrown away in Switzerland every year. "These materials are generally in good condition and could be reused, preventing us from having to manufacture new ones," says EPFL professor Corentin Fivet. "Especially since the production processes - which include extracting natural resources - generate a lot of pollution." Fivet heads the Structural Xploration Laboratory (SXL) at EPFL's School of Architecture, Civil and Environmental Engineering (ENAC).