Can you build a whole building with just a door? It's a really nice door!
This is not a riddle.
No. You need more than just one part to build a building.
It turns out, you also cannot build a complete ecosystem of reuse of building materials with just one part (we tried). You need the whole system.
That's why we're building the complete system with the help of many innovative people and partnering companies.
Our story started with this...
The huge and ever-growing problem we are taking on...
According to the US EPA in a 2018 study,
“Construction & Demolition Waste” (C & D Waste ) is the #1 largest category of waste in America. C & D Waste is twice as large as #2, “Municipal Waste,” which is all the trash, garbage, and recycling from all 330 million Americans at home and work, all year long. Twice.
Of the total of C & D Waste, approximately 50% is from buildings. The rest is from roads, bridges, and highways. These figures change every year, but the percentage is a useful comparison.
It started more than a century ago. Three inventions aided our ability to destroy and dispose quickly and cheaply: the steam engine, dynamite, and the wrecking ball.
Land was abundant. For a long time, no one seemed to care.
Straight from our founder's sketchbook, here’s a generalized look at the current model of sourcing, processing, selling, and distribution of used building materials.
Which begs the question...
WHAT IF?
What if building materials were removed from older buildings and routinely reused in new ones?
What would need to change for that to happen?
"You can never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete." - R. Buckminster Fuller
The Future State of the Ecosystem of Reuse of Building Materials and All Its Stakeholders
"The New Model of Reuse of Recaptured Building Materials"
So, how does ReCapturit help America to build this complete ecosystem of building materials #REUSE one city at a time?
First, we need to know where we're going and how we'll get there: the Vision and the Mission.
The VISIONis where we're going:
ReCapturit's Vision is to be the principal systems architect of "The New Model of Reuse of Recaptured Building Materials™" coordinating and implementing this regionally across America to completely transform the insidious and wasteful practice of destruction and disposal of building materials into reuse and life extension of these valuable resources, and to accomplish this by 2029.
The MISSION is how we get there:
ReCapturit's Mission is to implement The New Model of Distribution of Recaptured Building Materials and make them available nationwide to the community of Architecture, Engineering, and Construction (AEC) plus developers and building owners for profitable new markets and projects.
There are three main building components of
The New Model of Reuse of Recaptured Building Materials™
plus the foundation on which they stand.
PHYSICAL
STORAGE and
PROCESSING
We recognize that altruism and being good for the world have carried us this far, but those are not enough: we must make reuse competitive with new products. For that we need quantity, quality, selection, identification, availability, and consistency. We need space and modernization, factories that treat recaptured materials as raw materials to remake products that are ready to sell right alongside new products.
DIGITAL
ADVANCED
TECHNOLOGY
The world is advancing at a pace never seen before. The industry of selling and distributing of recaptured building materials can no longer afford to live in the past. The past is walk-in retail stores that have no shared modern inventory system to identify and communicate what they have with the world. Scanning, robotics, processing tools, and connectivity with Architecture, Engineering, and Construction are ahead.
ECONOMIC
CHANNELS of SALES
and DISTRIBUTION
Policy can no longer abdicate responsibility of system design to the community that the policy affects. No. These are peoples' lives and livelihoods being affected. Empathetic understanding must lead the process, and connection all the way to the purchaser / user of the diverted materials must be designed in as part of the creation of policy. Who is going to buy these materials and how? What do they need?
BUSINESS
COLLABORATION COMMUNITY
ReCapturit is like the Head Coach of a professional sports team. We have our internal coaching squad. Plus, we recruit the best talent available for our team. All are chosen for their strengths and specialties. We fill the roster and we practice for the games. We study the situations we enter, the conditions, the context. Like watching play films and considering local temperament and weather, we do a deep dive of where we're playing and we prepare for the game. All our games are away games. Each field and situation are unique. But the Rules remain the same. Our New Model of Reuse of Recaptured Building Materials is the Rule Book. How we play the game on a new field is how we adapt within the Rules.
We do this by working with cities and counties in America to build
The New Model of Reuse
of Recaptured Building Materials™
This captures the would-be-waste of the Construction and Demolition industries diverting these enormous volumes of materials from the doom cycle of destroy-and-dispose. It channels them as raw materials into the new system of processing, cataloging, and storing and makes them available for sale and distribution to a much larger audience of buyers for more and bigger projects.
Chris Rausch Ph.D., Aff.M.ASCE, Assistant Professor
Director, Equitable Technologies for Housing Innovation Center (ETHIC) The University of Texas at Austin | Fariborz Maseeh Department of Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering
