Sign up by Feb. 7 for GreenBiz 25, our sustainable business event Feb. 10-12 in Phoenix, to save $200.

Article Top Ad

Waste House, Library of Things disrupt city living (in a good way)

Circularity is the common denominator of new models of city living around the world. Read More

The interior of Waste House in Brighton

The following is an edited excerpt from “The Wasted City: Approaches to Circular City Making,” co-written by multiple authors and edited by CITIES Foundation  (Trancity*Valiz, 2017). The book is a collective work by people working on practical solutions to create circular movements in their local cities, and by an army of independent researchers who analyze the topic of circular city making. 

Deep urban transformation is not about a series of great stories on passionate and inventive start-ups, but about systems change. This may be an obvious point, but we live in a world where we hear endless stories about how disruptive start-ups are changing the world. So it’s easy to forget that start-ups, while they undeniably have transformational impact, are just one part of a complex picture.

Year started: 2014

Type: Nonprofit

Industry: Consumer goods

Category: Sharing economy, library, social enterprise

Founders: Rebecca “Bex” Trevalyan, Sophia Wyatt, Emma Shaw and James Tattersfield

Cities are filled with an ever-expanding collection of consumer goods, but how much of it is really necessary to own? In a circular city, citizens should optimally use materials, components and products; owning too many underused items is simply uneconomical and rather foolish. One way to reduce material consumption is to borrow products that are often little used. Take, for example, the sharing economy’s iconic power drill (more on power tools in the following case study), which a person usually uses for minutes and owns for years. Library of Things gathers useful items, like a drill, and with the support of its neighbors, is creating more with less.

At Library of Things, members can borrow a wide range of items as diverse as camping supplies, kitchen equipment and musical instruments. Items that are only needed once in a while, such as a PA system, are rented to members at a low price. In addition, those with a DIY inclination can receive one-on-one instruction or attend workshops to learn how to use things such as power tools and sewing machines. All and all, everyone can access useful items that might be rarely needed or too expensive to buy. It also offers a way to explore new hobbies or crafts without material commitment.

Organized as a nonprofit, Library of Things is a people-focused community project. Beyond the core team of founders, they are reliant on volunteers to help run the library, conduct community outreach and maintain products in good condition. After a successful pilot in a public library and months of searching, Library of Things found a more permanent location. Operating out of a pair of retrofitted shipping containers adjacent to a food surplus supermarket and regional recycling center, they help round out a small community of resource-savvy organizations. The space is a place to meet neighbors and exchange knowledge on how to use different items.

As Library of Things matures, it aims to be a community-owned business that is flexible enough to adapt to the needs of any local population. By offering a toolkit and boot camp to others, they hope to create and share a replicable model for other interested communities. In libraries fitting this model, profit and ownership are not the main drivers of commodity use. With people able to borrow instead of buy, access to goods is decoupled from an increase in resource consumption. This new social contract encourages community, knowledge sharing and collaborative consumption in lieu of conventional ownership. 

— Duncan Baker-Brown

Brighton Waste House; Brighton, U.K.


Year started: 2013 (started), 2014 (opened)

Type: Teaching space and office

Industry: Construction, architecture

Category: Education, commodity broker, building

Founders: Duncan Baker-Brown, BBM sustainable design, University of Brighton/ cat fletcher feegleuk/the mears group

The Waste House, an educational facility built on the central campus of the University of Brighton, was born out of a novel idea: to create a fully permitted, permanent building from construction waste. With about 20 percent of construction materials wasted in the U.K., the Waste House sought to build from these overlooked resources. Ultimately, construction incorporated discarded materials of all kind, including denim jeans, VHS tapes and toothbrushes.

The finished building serves as a classroom, meeting hall and living laboratory. As an exploration of building with scraps and rubbish, the Waste House is commendable, but the pedagogical methods surrounding its construction are equally relevant to the discussion of circularity. The design and construction included students from both the University of Brighton’s architecture program and those studying construction nearby at City College Brighton & Hove vocational school. Over 360 students worked together to construct the building and solve some of the most pressing issues as they developed.

When designing with waste, materials can become available with very little notice. As a result, portions of the building must be designed on the fly, sometimes without precedent. The exterior of the building is clad in some 2,000 old office carpet tiles, a material that was only realized two months before completion. The corner detail of the unorthodox cladding was an invention of a 15-year-old carpentry student. Being a new material application, the tiles had to be fire tested on site to meet fire safety regulations. Storage of diverse building supplies also proved a challenge. With typical construction, building material is sourced from suppliers and delivered when needed. With the Waste House, the building and design team acted as a commodity broker and kept material on-site, fortunately having city council’s approval to use a neighboring building for VHS cassettes repurposed as cavity insulation ongoing material storage.

Today, the Brighton Waste House stands monument to how we can challenge our perceptions of waste and education. Through the hands-on engagement of students, untapped assets can be discovered and repurposed with imagination and ingenuity, inspiring this generation and those to come to better identify and manage valuable, overlooked resources. Education is paramount in the societal shift required to make circular cities a reality.

— Duncan Baker-Brown

Conclusion

For the system to change, old systems need to become vulnerable and new systems more open to wider portions of society. And to be realistic, this will take a long time. Urban circularity remains in its infancy. The concept is young, and such complex, systemic change takes time to evolve, adapt and take irrepressible hold.

In its youth, circularity has not yet “come of age,” reaching the maturity needed to overcome the “old” (and not so wise) major systems in place. This is understandable. 

Not to mention the cultural, societal vibrations this type of action produces, which continually shake the outdated pillars holding up the very systems it seeks to topple. This seems far from futile. Yet in the end, more forceful initiative from higher-level actors may be necessary to make those pillars fall. And when they do come down, we’ll need a new support system ready to uphold a circular mode of operating and living. In this picture, the more experimentation, the better — as long as it coincides with and precipitates the implementation of bigger, stronger, more systemic initiatives. It did take some 60 years for previous generations to develop today’s globally embedded linear system. … With this book as the starting point, we begin counting the time until circular city making approaches become the true foundation of new urban systems — even if the transformation outlives us.

We envision organizing moments of sharing, where the book’s contents are presented and its opinions disputed in order to provide a more contextualized narrative of our findings. In these moments, additional narratives will be created. The statements below are a series of postulations derived from this book, which we hope will be used by present and future generations to ignite and instill yet-to-be-familiar urban operations — where circularity is the undeniable common denominator.

  • Ownership is dead; sharing infrastructures are the cradle of a new urbanity.
  • People are the cornerstone of urban circularity, and you’ll never walk alone.
  • Regulation must not lag behind the niche. Without new rules, the process is too slow.
  • Urban metabolism is screaming for commodity brokers.
  • Circular education is paramount for the wider population.
  • Circularity is not the sole goal; it is a means for systemic change. 

— Francesca Miazzo and Mehdi Comeau

Trellis Briefing

Subscribe to Trellis Briefing

Get real case studies, expert action steps and the latest sustainability trends in a concise morning email.
Article Sidebar 1 Ad
Article Sidebar 2 Ad