LIVING, BUILDING, RECYCLING

In construction, as it happens in other sectors of production, there is a continuous interest for the sustainability and for the protection of the environment. Nowadays The principle behind plannings and realizations is to live the Earth, building on it without twisting the natural laws, that are known thanks to the tests made in the last decades. One of the diffused and more effective ways to reach this objective are that to use recycled material. Certainly, these elements are considered refusals but they can be construction materials , with elevated technical characteristics and good performances, often as the traditional ones. This modus operandi represents an efficient solution to the waste of natural resources and, at the same time, an effective waste disposal method. Recycled materials are a valid alternative to typical ones, their transformation process requires less energy and less consumption of raw materials than production from scratch. The studies on waste disposal and processing operations show that it’s more convenient to directly reuse waste, both for the effects on the ecosystem and for the economic point of view. These are simply recovered and, with few operations, become secondary raw materials that can evolve into different elements without any transformation, representing an integration and an alternative. In the article, the analysis of existing buildings, realized with high percentages of recovered or reused materials, shows which materials are actually used and which elements have been realized with them. These materials have been worked with sustainable and not very common construction techniques. These must adapt to the element and must enhance its main characteristics. The purpose of the article is to show that the studies and experiments, supported by examples of buildings made of recycled materials, can educate to accept the second raw material in the same way as the original one.