A new app by an existing materials consultancy, launching on 15 December, aims to create a trading market place for construction materials destined for landfill.
Created by Revival Projects, the app will empower the design and construction communities to afford their unwanted construction materials a second life.
The practice received the best event award at Melbourne Design Week 2022 for its Zero Footprint Repurposing Hub in Collingwood – a free storage space for the design and construction communities to keep salvaged construction materials before repositing them back into new projects.
The app, “Revival Cooperative”, is the next phase of the company’s mission, providing a platform for users to explore construction materials commonly deemed as “waste”, and finding them a new home.
Revival Projects founder Robbie Neville said his ambition for the app is to “introduce some cohesion among the industry and community to adopt a more sustainable approach to the materials we don’t need.” The app will be free to use and available nationally for domestic and commercial users.
Revival Projects recently deconstructed two fire-damaged sculptures in Docklands. Every last stick from the sculptures has been salvaged.
Image: Supplied
Revival Cooperative will be similar in function to Gumtree or Facebook Marketplace; however, no commercial exchange will take place on the app. “Nothing is bought or sold on the platform,” said Neville. “Its purpose is purely with the hopes of building a community of people that are motivated to avoid landfill.”
Items listed will have one of three possible statuses: “proposed”, “ongoing”, and “ready for collection”, and anyone who expresses an interest in an item – be it pallets, cladding, timber, tin roofing – will receive updates on the item’s status. Browsers will receive automatic notifications based on their searched items, alerting users to when an item is uploaded with a keyword that meets their checklist.
Revival Cooperative will be applicable on a domestic scale, disrupting the “hard rubbish” culture of leaving materials on the curb side. On a more ambitious level, “It’ll provide a mechanism for the broader design community to take accountability for the volume of material that they send to landfill,” said Neville. “I hope it will change the juncture at which we determine something as waste.”
Neville has also suggested renaming demolition plans to “existing material management” or “existing resources management plans” to reimagine the way demolition by-products are conceived.
“The app is the tool to help us benefit from the amazing variety, diversity and creativity that’s in our communities and our industries. The community’s hungry for sustainable alternatives,” he said. “You don’t decide what’s waste; your community does.”
The Revival Cooperative app will be free to download form the Revival Projects website from 15 December.
Source: Architecture - architectureau
