Tokyo Government to Recycle Entire Housing Development

The Tokyo Metropolitan Government is taking on the challenge of recycling an entire city-owned housing development, by reutilizing all the scrap materials to rebuild a new apartment building.

The government plans to build a new twelve-story, 218-unit apartment building after tearing down a forty-year-old, 117-unit apartment complex comprised of five reinforced concrete buildings four or five stories high. The largest amount of recycled material expected is about 7,000 tonnes of concrete from the five blocks.

The concrete will be crushed into pieces at the site and used as road base or footings of the new buildings. Wood materials such as from old pillars will be converted to chips and used as sub-flooring. The mud used for driving in pilings will be hardened and used to fill in the foundation. The aim is to handle 100 percent of materials on-site. Using this as a pilot case, the metropolitan government hopes to recycle all of the aging housing complexes, about 25,000 units in total, that it is now considering rebuilding.



Posted: 2002/08/26 05:26:57 PM
Japanese version