Reclaiming our past.

In the passing of our daily lives, many of us will encounter the remains of some building or factory. As we drive by, we look over the edge of the highways and byways we travel, into the heart of developing ares. Amid the skeletal corpses of steel and timbers, caked in the dust of construction traffic, lie piles of brick and concrete. These once bright and grand facades have been reduced to gravel to be swept aside, making room for the future. We all see these remnants of yesterday and don’t give them much thought. We know, and most times just accept, that those piles will soon be in the back of a dump truck, on the way to some landfill, or off to fill a hole that will one day have another structure built on it.

Have you ever asked yourself, what if those builders were to reuse that material to build new structures? Have you ever wondered what would it be like to tear down bridges, and then use the rubble to shore and buttress the new? I have asked myself these questions and more. I worry at the amount of good reusable job site materials we throw away on a daily basis. Can we use these leftovers? Is there a way we could be more environmentally conscious about what we send to those landfills? The great news is we can and we do. In an age when the majority of us are concerned with how we are treating the environment, there exists a building material that has the potential to change the way we see new construction; gabions.

Gabions have been seen in construction projects around the world for a very long time. Whether they be made of woven or welded wire, gabions have traditionally be filled using quarried stone. These stones are typically trucked into project sites while the waste is trucked out. Creating such a large impact on the environment is usually thought of as a unfortunate side affect of the construction process. Not any more. With city and state budgets getting smaller, many projects are using less new material in order to save money, creating a very fortunate side affect. Also with a push to include more "Green" aspects in the designing of new projects, the project owners and designers are taking new steps to reduce waste.

More and more engineers, architects, and builders are using gabions to reclaim what was normally waste material and put it back into their projects. These forward thinking individuals are reusing the broken bricks and crushed concrete as fill material for gabions, creating walls and structures that meet or exceed the performance of newly manufactured products. By recycling these components, project owners and even taxpayers are being saved thousands of dollars a year.

Join us at Midwest Construction Products as we take a step into the future of new construction. We are bringing new ideas and strong methods for helping the contractor, the project owner, and the environment to the forefront of the industry. We will be ready to show you how to take products like gabion baskets and make them work in your designs and how they can help give back what so many are taking away. Stop by our website, www.gabionbaskets.net, and see what the future looks like.

I'll see you there.