Trash is accumulating all over the Earth, as evidenced by the growing Great Pacific Garbage Patch—a plastic/chemical sludge/debris patch in the North Pacific Ocean that is estimated to be anywhere from 270,000 square miles to 5.8 million square miles. Anything we can do to reuse materials and keep them from accumulating is vital to the health of our planet. Waste House is one such attempt to make an entire home out of materials that would have otherwise ended up in landfills and garbage sites. 

Waste House was constructed with 85% waste materials, with items such as old VHS cassettes, toothbrushes and razors, and used carpet tiles playing vital roles.

The project was conceived of and designed by a senior lecturer/architect and a group of students at the University of Brighton in the United Kingdom. Fully constructed, it now stands as an open house to showcase how salvaged materials can be used for new construction purposes. The materials for Waste House were gathered primarily from demolition sites and free recycling sites like Freegle UK (the UK’s version of Freecycle here in the United States).

Ingenuity and creativity are two words you could use to describe what materials were gathered and how they were implemented into the construction of the home. Here are just some of the materials that were gathered and reused in some very unconventional ways:

• Blocks of insulation were made from a variety of gathered materials: 20,000 toothbrushes, audio/video media cassette tapes and cases, and over two tons of denim waste.

• An entire wall was made out of ten tons of pounded chalk waste.

• Old vinyl signage was recycled to act as vapor barriers on the walls.

• 2,000 carpet tiles were repurposed as exterior siding.

• Blast furnace slag becomes the new foundation for the home.

• Recycled plywood and timber taken from local demolition sites becomes the new framing and structural support system.

The Waste House took a year to design and build—worked on by over 250 University of Brighton students—and will be an educational tool for years to come. Not only can the public walk through the home and see firsthand how the materials were utilized using “truth windows” showing inside the walls, but there are also educational displays. The home will also act as a living laboratory of sorts, with sensors installed throughout to measure long-term capabilities of things like the insulating materials.

Using recycled construction materials is a great way to reduce carbon emissions and waste while increasing energy efficiency. Hopefully green construction projects, such as Waste House, will continue to grow in popularity as people see the increasing need to minimize their carbon footprints. If you would like more information on green construction, please contact us.