Eat your heart out Albert Steptoe: architects and clients alike are seeking discarded materials for their buildings, driven by environmental concerns, the recession and the look of it. But it's more than cosmetic: if you want to use recycled stuff in your project you'll have to start thinking differently about design, writes Eleanor Young, executive editor, in the latest RIBA Journal.
 
When Martin Pawley wrote Garbage Housing in 1975 he thought of using all sorts of consumer waste, from car tyres and body parts, the Heineken World Bottle which stacked as a brick and newsprint cores. But there's an easier way: use waste from the construction industry.
 
Some of this is very simple, you just need to specify the right thing; recycled steel, PFA in your concrete or ground glass as an aggregate. But at the next level down, mainly small projects with private clients, it gets more direct. Ebay, Salvoweb, builderscrap.com, local skips, your own reject pile and the contractor's other sites are the main sources for this sort of project. At the moment it tends to be driven by ideology, or the idea of saving money on materials - it requires dedication, investigation, thinking on your feet and plenty of design flexibility.
 
[source RIBA Journal