Recycled Materials: The Return

So last weekend we did a bit of a clean-up of the backyard; ie a site clearance. The yard had some work done to it over the years, however as happens with many backyards when people become busy, it was a little bit unloved.

Before (looking north)

Of course once the development is finished, a big part of the finished product will be landscaping. We wanted to keep a number of things from the yard to use again, this included plants, rocks, timber, pavers and even the smashed up pieces of two concrete garden beds.

After (looking north)

The Plants:
The grasses should be fine to transplant (hoping they survive the build period). The eucalyptus will be another story. Apparently they don't transplant well if the trees are above a certain size; around 1 metre is the max I think. Even if only the grasses survive they will provide a good number of low maintenance plants, especially for a small yard.

The Rocks:

Really exciting right. Not that exciting while in a pile, but there are a number of decent sized granite rocks and some lengths of timber which we will reuse in the landscaping.

The Concrete:

This took the form of some pavers and the old garden beds. The pavers will be given their third life in our new development, probably used in the small patio area. We were wondering what to do with the concrete garden beds. When we established that they were too large to move...we smashed them. These pieces won't get thrown out, but we will use them to build small walls for garden beds. (I found this video which has a short bit about reusing concrete)

The garden beds having felt the wrath

Example garden bed wall from broken concrete 

Although this is clearly a minuscule amount of concrete, we feel it is good to reuse the stuff we already have. Concrete has a relatively small amount of embodied energy (see- http://www.yourhome.gov.au/technical/pubs/fs52.pdf) however the production of cement is a large contributor of emissions. Concrete is the most commonly used building material on the planet and apparently produces about 4-5% of world carbon emissions primarily because we use so much of the stuff.

Before (looking south)

So all in all it isn't much material, but every little bit helps when you are small time.

After (looking south)