Preventative maintenance, just like going to the doctor for a regular check up, is better than waiting until you become ill. We need to think about the full life cycle of a building from design and construction, operation, maintenance, refurbishment and final demolition. We need to consider the consumption of material, energy and other resources at each of these stages and the interrelationships between them. Some of these relationships are complex and it is difficult to obtain hard data to guide action but that is no excuse for not trying. There will always be the need for the designer to make value judgements in determining priorities and deciding on a workable balance between conflicting requirements.
Nature is the ultimate recycler and obeys the fundamental laws of science.
Recycling conserves material and energy resources, and it ultimately slows down the process of moving from an ordered state to a disordered state. Recycling of buildings could take various forms. Often this type of recycling is motivated by heritage considerations. Another type of recycling in the building industry is the reuse of building components such as windows, doors, plumbing fixtures,lengths of timber and some bricks. Reprocessing materials from building demolition is another way of recycling them.