Give and take…... Not take and take some more! How long would your bank balance last if you just took from it? What about your garden… Are you limited to the amount of food you can grow? It makes sense that what we take from the Earth MUST be replenished! Surely, we can’t expect to take and offer nothing in return? We recently had the opportunity to take and give back… In the way of bricks, old Melbourne red ‘clinker’ bricks!

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A project of ours in the beautiful Melbourne suburb of Clifton Hill, with gorgeous views of the city is using recycled red bricks. There are three homes two of which were very dilapidated and have been removed from site to make way for two beautiful new, reverse brick veneer homes. The homes will be built with major emphasis on thermal comfort and performance, while incorporating sustainability by using recycled resources and new technologies. Once onsite we discovered that the old brick wall between the remaining home and the new homes to be built was a real safety concern, so we had to pull it down. But it didn’t go to waste! Instead of throwing the old bricks in a truck and taking them to get crushed we decided to salvage what we could. We managed to save around 50% of the bricks and use them on the new homes!

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Taken from one spot and re-established on the same piece of land is a beautiful thing!I mean you can’t get much more efficient or sustainable than that! I think this should be common practice. We have industrialised the Earth for over 250 years and have a lot to show for it. Our built environment is large and ever expanding. Humans have a constant need to improve upon what we have by removing the old and supposedly improving it with the new. Often this has it’s purpose… But I think we should be placing more emphasis on using the resources we already have.

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By recycling or upcycling materials we give ourselves the opportunity to remove more carbon from our environment. It may be more laborious, but this is a good thing, it creates jobs which helps everyone. Just like any living organism the Earth needs to be replenished, we can’t continue robbing the resources from our earth and expect no consequences.

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Let the generation of conscious building begin! ;)