Guide for using recycled building materials on your renovation project

However, what most people don’t realise is that these recycled building materials can also make one-of-a-kind, efficient, and sturdy homes—minus the extra expense! It doesn’t necessarily mean that your dwelling should look like a salvaged-slash-uninspired home when using recycled materials. With your innate creativity and a bit of guidance from a home renovator professional, you can easily doll up your dwelling using hand-me-down materials. It can look sleek, modern, colourful, or boho, depending on your style! 

In this comprehensive article, we’ll go over the benefits of using recycled materials for your home renovation project. We’ll also walk you through on where you can find them and where you can use them in your home. We’ll also give you some tips on how you can efficiently obtain recycled materials. Of course, this guide wouldn’t be complete if we didn’t showcase some picturesque design inspirations using recycled building materials, so read on and enjoy!

What are reusable, recyclable building materials?

Recyclable building materials are anything reusable that came from another property site (a home or a commercial building). The term “recycled materials” has various categories, including:

Sustainable or eco-friendly materials – Also known as green building materials, they have a low impact on the environment and are easy to reuse. These include bamboo, cork, straw, wool, true linoleum products, strawboard, wheatboard, and more.

Salvaged materials – Any materials that originated from properties that have been deconstructed (not completely demolished) that can be reprocessed. These may include innovative recycled materials from wood, steel, glass, and plastic.

Reclaimed materials – Unlike salvaged ones, these materials have been used before and are reused without reprocessing.

All these different categories may include bricks, concrete, footings, clean rubble, limestone, sand, recycled timber, doors, windows, fire gates, lighting, cabinet hardware, bathroom and kitchen fittings, furniture pieces, fretwork, lacework, and even outdoor products (such as gates, fences, fire pits), and more.

What are building supplies made from recycled materials

Here’s a partial list of common building supplies made from recycled materials:

Base course materials – These materials are usually crumbled and recycled concrete used for building pavements or driveways.

Untreated timber – Large timber pieces are usually re-milled and used for construction. They can also be directly reused.

Metals – Metals like steel, aluminium, and copper are usually melted down and reformed into new metal products.

Timbercrete – A lighter type of concrete made with sawmill waste, cement, sand, and more. This is ideal for building fences, fireplaces, and retaining walls.

Ferrock – A longer-lasting type of concrete mainly made of waste steel dust. It is a strong green construction material that may be used as a substitute for cement. It’s so tough that it’s usually used for marine structures like seawalls and breakwaters.

Newspaperwood – Newspaper waste reprocessed to wood. Like real wood, it can be cut, milled, and sanded. Newspaperwood can be used for creating furniture pieces like tables, chairs, cabinets, and more.

Denim insulation – Made from clippings and scraps of denim clothing. Denim insulation is resistant to mould, mildew, and fungi.

Ecobricks – Plastic bottles transformed into bricks. They can be used to create furniture, but they are popular to use for building outdoor structures.

Why would contractors try to incorporate recycled materials?

There are many benefits to trying to incorporate recycled materials into construction projects, including:

It saves money – Recycling can help reduce waste disposal costs, minimising the overall cost of construction.  

It is environment-friendly – Using recycled materials is good for the environment because it can help reduce CO2 emissions. Burning waste materials cause an increase in CO2 emissions, which contributes to global warming, and you can help reduce pollution by recycling materials instead of burning them.

It can make construction companies competitive – Many homeowners are going for eco-friendly designs, and knowing how to incorporate recycled materials can make a construction company more competitive. In turn, they can offer  better rate to clients.

It can help make projects future-proof – New building laws and regulations try to incorporate environment-friendly provisions, and reducing the carbon footprint of your home can make it compliant with new regulations.

Benefits of using recycled building materials

Saves money – Recycling can save money because you can reuse and repurpose old materials instead of buying new and expensive materials. Recycled materials are also cheaper compared to fresh or new materials.

Unique renovation ideas – Scavenging for recycled materials might lead you to discover unique pieces that you can use for your home renovation project. If you’re aiming for a rustic or vintage renovation theme, you might score great finds at low prices compared to buying new materials given an aged look

Reduces waste on landfills – When you use recycled materials, you help reduce the amount of waste sent to landfills, so you help ensure that only non-reusable materials get sent to landfills for disposal. 

Conserves natural resources – Using recycled building materials means cutting fewer trees to produce lumber which can help keep the air clean because trees absorb carbon monoxide. Saving trees can also help prevent flooding because trees absorb water and help prevent soil erosion and landslides.

Using recycled materials can also help preserve mountains because metallic materials come from mines often carved out of mountains.

Reduces pollution – Landfills can contaminate bodies of water and sources of potable water, so reducing the amount of rubbish in landfills can help minimise water pollution. Burning waste can cause air pollution, and minimising the amount of trash in landfills can help reduce the number of air pollutants.

Saves energy – Recycling building materials can help save energy because transporting rubbish to landfills, burying them or burning them uses energy. Using recycled materials also means manufacturing companies use less energy to produce new raw materials.

Helps create jobs – Using recycled building materials can help create jobs because recycling plants will need more workers if more construction companies use recycled materials on their sites.

Can I really save money by using recyclable building materials?

Yes, you can save money by using recycled or reclaimed materials because you don’t need to buy new materials, which are obviously more expensive. An example is turning your old wood planks into tables, chairs, or dividers. Aside from saving money by not transporting old wood into a landfill, you also save money because you don’t need to buy new furniture.

You can also ask around for discarded building materials you can buy at low prices for your home renovation project. Some might be willing to give you old materials for free since you are saving them the cost of sending materials to a landfill. If you’re not sure how and where to source these materials, see our section below on where to source recycled building supplies.

Meanwhile, contractors can save money in the long run by using recycled materials because it reduces the need to manufacture new raw materials. This can lower manufacturing and construction costs which benefits homeowners because the overall cost of building houses and renovations will also go down.

Where to use recycled materials in your home

Walls – You can use recycled tiles and salvaged bricks for your walls or wall features. Recycled tiles can be made of porcelain or glass materials that can add that glossy, modern look. Meanwhile, bricks can add that homey, vintage feel.

Floors – You can use recycled floorboards. These older woods have that unique aged character that you can’t find in new wood products. If you’re not a fan of timber flooring, you can always opt for recycled tiles.

Kitchen – You can give more personality to your kitchen when you use different recycled materials. You can use bamboo countertops, which are more durable than most hardwoods. To boot, you can add recycled tiles for your splashbacks. For storage, you can use reclaimed wood to create space-saving floating shelves.