00:00On the outskirts of Castlemaine, a treasure trove of materials salvaged from old buildings
00:07lies waiting for a new life.
00:10Business owners Matt and Anna have spent decades building with, and selling, second-hand construction
00:14materials.
00:15We've become such a kind of throwaway world that we kind of, and the stuff we're throwing
00:19away is quite often awesome and better quality than what we've got now.
00:24They want to inspire others to reduce waste by reusing what's available.
00:28What we're constantly trying to do is impart our creative thinking onto other people that
00:34may not be able to see it or inherently value that resource.
00:40Developing a greener construction industry is seen as key to reducing Australia's carbon
00:44emissions and landfill.
00:45In fact, around 18 to 20% of emissions are generated by our sector, by construction sector,
00:52and about 40% of the total landfill comes from construction waste.
00:57And while reusing existing materials is a good start, Dr Kodja Turk says the industry
01:02needs to change its thinking.
01:04When we design new buildings, we would ideally not design them for one life cycle in mind.
01:10Imagine a building which is designed to be disassembled and dismantled so that its different
01:16materials and parts could be used in future constructions, for example.
01:21Builder and engineer Quentin Irvine tried to achieve that in a house near Ballarat.
01:25So it was all that kind of big picture stuff that we achieved.
01:28There's probably like a good sort of 10% of that building that's not really recyclable.
01:32He says a major challenge is the common use of composite materials containing glues and
01:37plastics, which often can't be reprocessed into new products later on.
01:41Yeah, people generally, when they think about houses, think that houses are going to last
01:44forever.
01:45And I'm here to bring the bad news that they're not going to last forever.
01:49Using the past to build a better future.
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