From cars to clothes, buying things that are used tends to be cheaper.
But that hasn’t been the case when it comes to building with recycled materials.
Some developers of office buildings, schools and hospitals heavily rely on recycled materials for interior frames, floors, carpet and ceiling tiles as a way to cut down on using up natural resources.
The practice has grown in the past few years as tenants and landlords ask for eco-friendly buildings.
“You can’t fight the trend,” said Winston Bao, an associate at the Irvine-based architect LPA Inc. “The incentive is that you can be environmentally friendly.”
But the prices of using recycled materials tend to be higher due to the cost of finding and shipping them and labor costs.
That is changing as recycled materials have become more available, which has made some things cheaper, according to Bao, whose firm has been building environmentally friendly projects for 40 years.
Before, a quarter of building suppliers were offering recycled materials. Now nearly 100% of suppliers sell materials with a reused component, he said.
One of LPA’s better-known projects was the headquarters it designed for Toyota Motor Sales USA Inc. in Torrance, which was completed in 2003.
The building’s steel structure was made from recycled cars and its office interiors contained Terratex fabric, which is made from things like recycled soda bottles and corn.
At a cost of $87 million, the 624,000-square-foot campus was touted as costing as much as regular office buildings.
Its specially designed rooftop solar cell panels save on electricity costs, which should recoup building expenses for the company by 2010.
Network Saves Money
But even with the savings of accessible supplies, rising shipping costs have prevented prices on these materials from coming down.
“You don’t have to mine it, but depending on where it’s going, shipping can be a big part of the cost,” Bao said.
Creating a network of buyers and sellers could cut down on that cost.
Joseph Marfi, a senior purchasing agent with Turner Construction Co., part of German construction company Hochtief AG, has been trying to develop a system for buyers and sellers to learn more about each other.
“We need a platform to communicate,” Marfi said.
Marfi is the secretary for the Orange County chapter of the Green Building Council.
The U.S. Green Building Council is a nonprofit that promotes environmentally friendly development through education, building standards and networking.
Its Web site is looking to create a platform that can be used as an online marketplace by local builders, Marfi said.
A lot of materials taken from scrapped buildings get wasted because their owners don’t want to pay for storage, he said.
“There’s too much waste,” he said. “People would rather send it off for demolition than try to find someone to buy it.”
If the market were more efficient it would bring the prices down, Marfi said.
Turner Construction was the general contractor for the Toyota headquarters in Torrance.
“We’re constantly searching for materials,” he said.
Steel is one of the more common materials recycled. Opportunities are sought in every aspect of a design, he said.
Recycled wood floors can be cheaper than new wood. They can also add quality.
“The older the wood the better,” Marfi said. “It gets a relaxed feel to it and can always be refinished.”
In one of its latest projects, Turner Construction is using redwood from old vats at a winery to build a sun shield for a building.
Concrete mixed with the ash from coal-fired furnaces to create “fly ash” can be 10% to 15% cheaper than regular concrete, he said.
Carpets are also popular for recycling. They can be from reused existing carpet or from using other recycled materials to make new carpet.
With higher oil costs affecting the price of the nylon that most carpets are made from, demand for cheaper alternatives has been on the rise, said Betty Friedrichs, who sells carpet to commercial buyers for Dalton, Ga.-based Tandus Group Inc. She is also the membership chair for the local chapter of the U.S. Green Building Council.
The process for recycling carpet hasn’t been very cost effective, but that could be changing, she said.
To recycle carpets, they’re thrown into a vat where they undergo a costly heat and chemical treatment that breaks them down to the original nylon, Friedrichs said.
“The problem is it takes more time and energy than tends to be worth it,” she said.
But soon enough a company will likely find a way to do it cost effectively. One company has already made claims, but the results have yet to be seen, she added.
“Every manufacturer has been throwing dollars at how to do it less expensively,” she said.
