The domicology movement aims to save materials from demolished buildings, sending less to landfills.
WKAR FILE PHOTO
“Consumers want to be more environmentally sensitive in their consumer purchases,” LaMore says, “so they’re willing to pay a slight markup on a reused or salvaged product if they know that they’re reducing their environmental footprint and supporting a more robust, environmentally sensitive construction economy.”
Source: Domicology Aims To Reuse Deconstruction Materials | WKAR
One of many abandoned structures in Detroit CREDIT FLICKR USER STEPHEN HARLAN / HTTP://MICHRAD.IO/1LXRDJM
He recently received a U.S. Department of Commerce grant to work on the problem in Muskegon, an area LaMore tells us is desirable because of “the potential to use the port as an economic growth engine for the region, and to create jobs around the deconstruction sector by gathering the debris from many of the great cities along the Great Lakes shoreline and then bringing that to Muskegon.”
LaMore will be working with 3,000 abandoned structures in Muskegon, as well as looking at materials from Chicago, Toledo, Cleveland, Detroit, Milwaukee and other Great Lakes cities to determine the economic feasibility of their reuse.
LaMore’s research emphasizes deconstruction over demolition, but he tells us that’s something of an uphill battle because the former lacks economic incentive.