Construction materials or waste? Reuse of construction materials in the past

Belgium generates 10 million tonnes of construction and demolition waste annually, hardly any of which is reused. Climate objectives, however, force us to move quickly in the direction of recycling. Strangely enough, this gigantic waste of building materials seems to be a phenomenon of the last hundred years only, because before, the reuse of building materials was an integral part of the building process. This presentation will contain two parts. The first part presents a collage of "historical reuse" in Bruges, Brussels, Amsterdam and Leiden as we happened to come across it during our research into other aspects of the building industry. Urban ordinances, building bills, purchase contracts, estate inventories, and especially archaeological and building history research help to provide insight into the extent and nature of reuse. The second part offers a presentation of our new interdisciplinary project "Re-Building Brussels" in which historians, architect engineers and geographers of the VUB will focus on the circular economy.