Edinburgh should reclaim and reuse materials from the 1,700 unfit homes it plans to demolish

Edinburgh Scotland - EDINBURGH Council plans to spend £21m demolishing 1,700 of its total 23,000 council-owned homes including seven tower blocks over the next eight years because it's cheaper than doing them up. The energy cost of demolishing a load of houses and replacing them with new ones is very high, and much of the energy content of the new materials will be off-shored to China and India. Edinburgh want a reluctant Scottish Executive to bail them out with part of their £100m Edinburgh slush fund. If it was me I would agree to that but but the proviso that all the materials from the demolished homes should be reclaimed and reused in the new ones, NOT recycled, mulched, chipped and crushed into oblivion. Perhaps this would slow down their enthusiasm for demolition as a quick but wholly unsustainable fix past housing mismanagement.

In 1993 I co-wrote a report for the Scottish Executive with Howard Liddell and Fionn Stevenson, which seems to have gathered dust on some backroom shelf ever since, entitled 'The reuse of reclaimed materials in construction in Scotland'.