Bunch of Old Bananas or Building Materials of the Future?
Potatoes reborn as insulation, peanuts processed into partition boards and mushroom bricks that grow in five days – just some of the ways the building trade could change its wasteful ways and construct virtuous new cities. In a report released on Wednesday, international engineering firm Arup set out novel ways for an industry that devours raw materials to cut waste. “We need to move away from our ‘take, use, dispose’ mentality,” Guglielmo Carra, European lead for materials consulting at Arup, said in a statement. “What we need now is for the industry to come together to scale up this activity so that …