From Demolition to Deconstruction: Building San Antonio’s Circular Economy (Stephanie Phillips)

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We are the largest city in North America to have a deconstruction ordinance, which I always like to say because we are in San Antonio and every time I come across someone on the West Coast or the East Coast or Canada or across the world that hasn't heard about our policy, they're like Texas.

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Really and.

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I'm like hell yeah.

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In Texas I always say demolition doesn't happen in a bubble and demolition happens to buildings, but it also happens to people.

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You can't build a community around a landfill.

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You can definitely build community around sharing and reuse.

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They don't make them like they used to, from dishwashers to our homes.

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It's an idiom that unfortunately, holds true.

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Experts estimate that the average lifespan of modern appliances has dropped by 20 to 30 percent over the last couple of decades.

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Homes and buildings constructed before World War II were often built with higher quality, stronger and more resilient old growth wood materials that are becoming harder to come by today, as we've exhausted some of our finite natural resources.

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As we face a housing crisis, with home prices in San Antonio rising more than 30% since 2019, the pressure to build new homes is greater than ever.

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And yet the construction industry is grappling with a shortage of skilled labor, with 250,000 open jobs across the nation.

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Beyond the economic challenge, there's also an undeniable environmental cost.

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The buildings and construction sector accounts for 37% of global emissions, and construction waste is the largest source of landfill waste in the US.

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However, the challenge also presents an incredible opportunity to do more with less or with the same.

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Deconstruction, which you'll hear about more in this episode, offers a way to turn this problem into progress.

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Instead of demolishing homes and sending valuable materials to landfills, deconstruction allows us to salvage high-quality building materials, old growth wood bricks and windows and reuse them in new projects and homes across the city.

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By reusing these materials, we of course salvage the value of something otherwise thought of as waste destined for a landfill, but we also infuse greater value into our local San Antonio economy.

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In fact, deconstruction employs six times more people than traditional demolition.

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If materials are deconstructed here, we need skilled professionals to do those jobs here, and if those materials are then reused here, they could be purchased here versus extracted from tree farms or plantations elsewhere in the United States and across the world.

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The supply chain and the value that's created becomes local, an additional boon to our city of San Antonio and an incredible savings of further environmental expenditure.

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And to share with us today how we square this circle, or circle the square, I'm joined by Stephanie Phillips from the Office of Historic Preservation with the City of San Antonio and co-founder of Circular San Antonio, a nonprofit organization on a mission to drive growth of a circular economy in the greater San Antonio region through education, action-focused work groups, advocacy events and collaboration.

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I'm Corey Ames, your host, and this is Ensemble Texas.

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Here's Stephanie.

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I am the senior program manager for the city's Deconstruction and Circular Economy program, which was formally created in 2022.

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So it's a very new program and I'm so excited that I'm the first person to have what I think is the coolest job title in the city and, like the country, you don't have a lot of people in city government that have circular economy or deconstruction in their title, because it's such a new program and the Deconstruction and Circular Economy Program administers the city's deconstruction ordinance, which was adopted almost exactly two years ago.

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So we make sure that older building stock gets deconstructed instead of demolished and we also work to grow basically our building materials reuse ecosystem through facilities like our Material Innovation Center and workforce training efforts like our deconstruction contractor training program.

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And outside of that, I do a lot of stuff that's related to reuse and embodied carbon because that's my passion, and the biggest thing is recently co-launching Circular San Antonio, which is a local nonprofit seeking to scale circular efforts here too, I'm interested, first, if you could tell me about the story as to how embodied carbon and reuse became your passion, because I imagine that those were terms, first and foremost, that you kind of had to discover yourself.

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Exactly so.

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I have a background in interior architecture and a graduate degree in historic preservation from UT, so that's how I got to Texas and historic preservation is kind of a loaded term, but the way that I consider it is a form of retaining materials, stories, cultural heritage in our cities, and San Antonio is probably the best city in the country to be working in this field.

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The past five years or so the term embodied carbon has become more synonymous with historic preservation and essentially what embodied carbon is is all of the energy and time and effort and materials that went into constructing our buildings.

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So the bricks that hold up this building, the wood that holds up our houses, is a form of embodied carbon, and all of that energy is locked into those materials.

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So it's already been expended.

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And this is in contrast to operational energy, which I think a lot more people are familiar with, or operational carbon, which is the energy required to power and cool and run our buildings.

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So I kind of look at as embodied carbon as a way to retain that energy that already exists, so making sure that our buildings can stand and be adapted instead of demolished and thrown away, which necessitates even more energy to be expended after.

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Well, so how did you get there?

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You know working now in deconstruction when, from what I understand what I could do, your original interest was in interior design.

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Yeah, so I have a professional degree in interior design.

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But pretty early on in that education I realized that I was more interested in working with existing buildings versus, you know, getting a floor plan and designing in a bubble or designing for anywhere USA, and part of that was because of my environment.

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I went to undergraduate at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and they have one of the most incredible pedestrian only main thoroughfares in State Street and it's just lined with older buildings.

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It's kind of the textbook example of how we built our cities before we catered to cars.

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So I always loved, you know, working with those buildings and imagining repurposing those instead of creating something brand new.

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And from that I pursued my graduate degree in historic preservation, originally to potentially become an interior architect or architect that focused on adaptive reuse.

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But I learned pretty quickly as well that I didn't want to be an architect.

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I was more interested in the community engagement piece that came with urban planning, working with communities directly and having, you know, kind of seeing the impact of your work in real time, which isn't always possible when you're designing a building, because the lead time, for that takes a while, so I that's kind of how I transitioned into that space.

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And so growing up, was there any sort of I don't know upbringing influence or what have you to encourage you to think about our built environment in a different way?

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Can you track that back in any sort of way?

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I really do think like the kicker was in college.

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I grew up in the suburb of Milwaukee in 1970s, 1980s, like track suburb and my parents still own the house I grew up in.

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Like it's very nostalgic and my hometown is very important to me, but I kind of learned after being exposed to a city like Madison and living in that downtown experience that this is the environment that I thrive in, especially because it offers more diversity of experience and people and connections in a more concentrated space and you don't need a car to do it.

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So I think that's really where my love for resource use and, you know, connecting people and urban planning and policymaking for a sustainable world kind of popped into my head.

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And a lot of that is actually retroactive thinking.

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I never thought I would work in local government ever, even after I graduated grad school.

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But when I think back to all of the things that I was innately curious about, it makes a lot of sense why I'm here.

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Well, and then from Midwest down to Texas, and now, specifically, san Antonio.

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What is it like, then, to be working not only in local government, but local government here in San Antonio?

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How do you feel being in the position that you are?

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I feel incredibly fortunate.

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I think San Antonio is one of the best places to be in a lot of ways and for me I went to graduate school in Austin and I was there from 2013 to 2015 and that's kind of right around the cusp of like the boom that we associate with Austin's like rapid growth, and it's really interesting to come down here and be a part of that now and see what that meant in Austin without really the strategies and the tools to mitigate growth and kind of balance the environmental integrity of a city, the cultural, historic, physical buildings of that city.

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We've kind of always seen like that moving down the corridor in.

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San Antonio.

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So since 2017, I've been so fortunate to be in a role and an apartment that plays such a big part in how our city is planned and growing, and facilitate those conversations with architects, developers, community members growing and facilitate those conversations with architects, developers, community members.

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It's just an incredible playground in a way to work and live.

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Okay, you'll immediately notice that we don't have air conditioning in here yet I wanted to show this house because we're able to demonstrate the Living Heritage Trades Academy effect, like Jess was mentioning.

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So all of these windows have been restored by our Trades Academy and you'll kind of sense that from some of the glass like remnants of that.

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But this is also one of the bigger houses on campus.

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This is where the generals and their families used to live, so you know the major people on this campus when it was active.

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And right now we describe the interior as 90s funeral home vibes.

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But I promise there's like hardwood flooring under here, like very, it's very intact.

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So in the near term, one of our goals, in conjunction with Port San Antonio, is to restore this house and make it a functional office space, and you'll see in the next bungalow it's pretty similar.

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But you'll see what we mean about our dream tool library because there are tons of tools in there.

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Let's go over here.

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So we kind of describe these houses in their current life as a learning lab, which is why our Trades Academy gets to play with all of these windows.

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And then this was one of the first places that we started taking donated building materials, like before our deconstruction ordinance, before we had the garage that we'll visit.

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So all of these windows you can kind of see like this unique curve on here, came from a church in downtown um, st mark's, when the like administration building was being renovated.

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So the contractor was like we have 136 wood windows that we're going to throw away, like, do you want them?

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And one of our like toxic traits is to say yes whenever people are getting rid of materials.

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So, um, some of these and you'll see, have been repurposed in different ways or have been reinstalled here or reinstalled in other affordable housing or trades projects.

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So we are very happy to take these materials to reuse them in the future.

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And then over here are things that people usually don't see with old windows, and these are window weights.

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So we have all different sizes.

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And it's kind of nice for us because when we were doing like restoration projects back in the day, we would have to kind of like search for these for our contractors, and now we're like building a stash for them to be like if you need these to restore something.

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We have them for you.

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These are so cool.

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We love window weights.

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We kind of use this example of window weights and ropes as these windows were designed to be repaired.

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So windows are always a big thing with preservation, but they're really like a great little part of a building to demonstrate Like these were really designed to be repaired by people over the years.

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So that's kind of what we teach in our courses.

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It's just you don't have to throw everything away.

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If it's a little bit broken, we'll teach you how to fix it.

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Windows are just a fraction usually less than 20% of energy loss in a building.

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Most of it comes from the foundation and the roof.

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So we spend a lot of time, especially like we both live in older houses.

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My house was built in 1925 and is a landmark.

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So I kind of talk about like these are the exact things that happen in my house and we're actually doing a demonstration project with the Neighborhood and Housing Services Department right now where we're storing all of the original wood windows but then implementing traditional features like the screens yes, so screens, so natural ways that we've been doing all of our years to prevent heat gain.

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And then things like trees, like a lot of people don't think about trees as a strategy to reduce heat gain, especially on the East and West.

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And then interior window inserts.

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You know um film that you can install on inside of windows.

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And we have a UTSA like PhD student that's energy modeling, and she was like if we replace these windows, the difference would be negligible.

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So a lot of what we do is kind of that counter education of like we don't have anything to sell you.

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We're not big window.

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Rather, we're encouraging you to reinvest in what already exists on your house that has been there for, in cases like these, over 100 years.

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And then we also try to like talk to people in a roundabout way about embodied energy of them as well, like the labor that it costs to make these.

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The quality of the wood, so these windows, because they're old growth wood, are more resistant to things like water damage, mold, termites, other kinds of pests, and so it's really like a higher quality product.

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I think in the lifespan of like a traditional replacement window, now, like there's a limited warranty for a reason right, like 10 year limited warranty If you paint them, if you sell the house, if you try to fix it wrong like it's void.

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So in the lifespan of one of these windows you'll have to replace your windows like four to five times.

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And so that's been a really interesting shift and like we are seeing this trend in the architecture industry of like oh wait, like throwing away materials is actually not great for the earth, especially because construction and demolition waste is the largest source of waste in the world and demolition waste is the largest source of waste in the world.

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So, talking about embodied energy in conjunction with operational energy and how we kind of mesh that in a way that makes sense for specific buildings and specific climate, Could you give us an explanation of what the day-to-day looks like for your position and perhaps what that connects, or specifically the deconstruction ordinance that you already mentioned?

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Can you give us greater detail as to what that is, what the implications are for our city and how that ties to your day-to-day?

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in 2017, I was a senior case manager for our Landmarks Commission, so working with architects and homeowners on decisions that they were making with their properties and helping them navigate those decisions.

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And right around that time, city council issued a council consideration request to our department and our peer departments, like development services, to look at all of the demolition policies that were on the books, and this was largely in response to a community effort around the pace and location of primarily single family and missing middle housing that was being more readily demolished as the city started to grow right.

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So that was a really big inflection point from a policy perspective and those constituents kind of advocated to their city council member to you know, see, can we be doing something better from a city administration standpoint around demolition?

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And from that came the idea of a potential deconstruction policy or program and what that means.

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So, as buildings are going through the process, the decision making, the permitting process to be demolished or be removed, there are a few inflection points where, especially in our office, we have community members coming to us saying we actually need to save this building.

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This building is really important to us, but it may not have historic protections, so it's really really difficult to stop the removal of that building.

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And this is some of the testimony that we heard in those early days of this policy discussion is, you know, one day I could see a building that really means something to me and the next day it's smashed and gone and that can be really fracturing and almost violent for communities if that critical resource that has been part of their living heritage honestly for a long time is just gone, and from that came the idea of deconstruction, which is slowing down the demolition process.

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It's basically unbuilding a building in the opposite way it was constructed, or reverse engineering.

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So instead of heavy machinery smashing a building and throwing it into a landfill, in a matter of days you have people slowly dismantling from the roof down to the foundation and salvaging those materials for reuse.

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So that's the process that we wanted to see more of.

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I think some of the best policies, especially at the local level, come out of the idea of there is something happening in my community that I don't think is right and I don't think is benefiting me, and this is just one of those examples.

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Well, I mean, it seems that there's a much greater opportunity, following more intentional deconstruction, to keep some cultural continuity, as it seems.

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You're saying um, my brother-in-law uh calls one of the the new styles of, like modular developments, space barns.

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You know, I think we're all kind of familiar with that.

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Look, austin's really prevalent with them, san antonio's getting its fair share of them, uh.

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But you kind of imagine 20 to 30 years down the line thinking like, oh, that's gonna.

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It stands out currently like kind of you know, a sore thumb but it doesn't really fit, you know, in the style and it's something that's really kind of templated.

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And you start to see it, whether you're in Boise, idaho, another city where I have family live, growing very fast and changing Austin or San Antonio, and that, you know, breaks my heart a little bit.

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But I'm curious, what would you say to someone who hears that and says like that is a really good idea, it's a pleasant idea, but to me, someone slowly deconstructing a building and salvaging materials, that sounds maybe inconvenient and maybe expensive.

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What would you say to someone with that kind of response?

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Yeah, so our deconstruction ordinance was adopted in 2022, and we started talking about a policy in 2017, 2018.

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So we spent about four and a half years kind of interrogating those exact questions with a deconstruction advisory committee which had anyone from our real estate council which is, you know, the development arm, advocacy arm of San Antonio to environmental advocates, preservation advocates, solid waste and affordable housing experts, and I loved that.

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I think it's such a great tool to develop policy because you have a lot of people coming together in a room pretty consistently that would never share space with each other, or very rarely, and that affords the ability for those people to hear each other out and say you know, this may slow down my development process, but another person may say, okay, and it's going to benefit our environment, we're going to have more access to building materials in our community and it allows those people to have those discussions.

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So we kind of almost in a way, held space for those conversations to happen and stood back and said what would a policy look like for San Antonio specifically, versus like copying one from a different city?

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So that's so time and cost I don't think is something that is ameliorated by this policy or by deconstruction in general, it's always going to be a concern, but in the same way that we talk about any other development and environmental policy, it's like what are we losing, or who is getting the brunt of the negative externalities?

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To save $3,000 or to save four days of time?

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And the answer to that, through our research, through our engagement, through connecting with our city council members and our constituents, was the community.

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Demolition is, like I mentioned, violent and fracturing.

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It is a form of air pollution.

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Even if you do it best by spraying down a site, it is a form of air pollution.

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You know, even if you do it best by spraying down a site, you have particulate matter spreading 200, 400, 600 yards away from a site.

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I always say demolition doesn't happen in a bubble and demolition happens to buildings but it also happens to people.

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So you know, spraying down a site, that particular matter can get into our groundwater and it's just something that we as a society have been kind of conditioned to accept.

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Because I know in my generation I never knew anything different than demolition to remove buildings right.

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Like I loved climbing on cool bulldozers and playing pocket games when I was growing up.

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That was just something that you constantly saw.

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But when you recognize how damaging that way of removing buildings can be, it becomes really challenging to justify it in any way.

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I love our department and like what's happening in San Antonio for a lot of reasons, but I think why we've found a lot of success, especially in the context of national audiences, like San Antonio is looked at as kind of the leader in municipal historic preservation because of that holistic approach.

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You can't regulate something without the ability for the community to find that resource.

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So I think I've been here for over seven years, jess has been here for over six years, right, and when I started I know that we had sometimes had issues with customers finding, for example, wood window restoration contractors.

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But now that doesn't happen because of our trades academy, right, like we've, I want to say, almost double the amount of people that are working in this space through education, and that's like a testament to workforce development is kind of a key to reversing, like the trend of like oh, it's broke, let's throw it away that linear economy approach.

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Okay, so you'll notice a lot of similarities in the funeral home vibe, but we have tools in here, and the reason why I want to point this out is because a lot of these tools weren't just bought for the purpose of like a future tool library but were collected over the years for our trainings, especially our deconstruction contractor training, which we launched about five years ago.

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So you'll see things like shovels and weed eaters, but also things like crowbars and demolition hammers.

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And San Antonio is one of the largest cities in the country that doesn't have a community tool library.

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So our sister nonprofit is going to develop that, either in this bungalow or a bungalow that will pass down the street.

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So we're really excited because we've learned from working with customers a lot that you know tools are expensive Like my husband's still mad at me because I bought a circular saw to do one craft for OHP and it's sitting on our porch because we don't have anywhere to store it and it's, you know, sometimes tools are single use.

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So if we can kind of mitigate access to that and distribute them to people that need them, even temporarily, we'll feel like we're, you know, scratching away the barriers to home repair.

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Because especially in San Antonio, in our work of reviewing every demolition permit in the entire city which is what Jess does, which can be depressing sometimes, but then also working with our deconstruction ordinance is that a majority, especially of houses that are coming in for demolition, are being requested because of deferred maintenance right over 10, 20, 30 years.

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So if we can kind of stave that off at the source, we'll see less and less requests to demo.

00:26:26.828 --> 00:26:46.173
The goal of our Trades Academy and kind of our partnership with Port San Antonio is that once they fix this house, we're just going to keep moving down the street and, you'll see, as we get further down the street the houses get a little bit more shabby chic, as I like to call it.

00:26:46.173 --> 00:26:54.967
So we're really excited about, you know, continuing to keep moving and using these houses as learning labs.

00:27:00.991 --> 00:27:06.676
The world was Stephanie's kind of utopian vision, at least San Antonio specifically.

00:27:06.676 --> 00:27:34.497
And deconstruction was the blanket policy and the way in which we operated with buildings that had maybe seen the extent of their useful life needed to scaling deconstruction so that we could apply it on a citywide level, a region level.

00:27:34.497 --> 00:27:37.648
What's in our way from being able to do that?

00:27:38.141 --> 00:27:43.153
I love that question because we get a lot of questions about are we expanding our ordinance?

00:27:43.153 --> 00:27:46.249
Are we including commercial, are we looking into newer buildings?

00:27:46.249 --> 00:27:52.586
And there are a few cities across the country who have deconstruction regulations for every single building in their city.

00:27:52.586 --> 00:28:10.426
A few of them are Boulder, colorado, and Palo Alto, california, and they're aiming to have 85% diversion rates, in some cases for the entirety of the building, and it's so incredible and something that I think we hope to aspire to.

00:28:10.426 --> 00:28:16.230
Of course, if you know geographies and know city size, those are a lot smaller cities than San Antonio, so you have to start somewhere.

00:28:16.960 --> 00:28:20.768
I think some key barriers to scaling it are workforce.

00:28:20.768 --> 00:28:32.886
That's such a big component of our program is workforce training, because in order to effectively regulate a policy, you need to make sure that you have the people that can do the work on behalf of people that are hiring them.

00:28:32.886 --> 00:29:02.893
So even before, well before, several years before we adopted our ordinance, we launched our certified deconstruction contractor training program, where we bring in a national trainer we typically hire Repurpose Savannah, which is an all women plus led deconstruction nonprofit in Savannah, georgia, that trains people how to fully remove buildings but then also gives them the tools to launch their own reuse center so they take down buildings and they also sell those materials to their communities.

00:29:02.893 --> 00:29:12.909
So they're actually going to be here in October leading to more cohorts of deconstruction contractor training programs so we can get even more people locally to do that work.

00:29:14.000 --> 00:29:21.910
And I think another barrier is actually just how the way we built buildings changed pretty rapidly after World War II.

00:29:21.910 --> 00:29:31.528
So currently our deconstruction ordinance requires buildings built, houses built before 1945 in certain areas to be deconstructed.

00:29:31.528 --> 00:29:54.673
And that was a very strategic date because after World War II you started to see a lot more mass production introduced and a lot more things that make it difficult to unbuild a building, like glues, mastics, staples basically gluing a bunch of building materials together, which is very different than kind of the Lincoln Logs strategy of how we used to build buildings before World War II.

00:29:54.673 --> 00:29:57.342
So we're kind of thinking about that as well.

00:29:57.342 --> 00:30:09.852
There are a few companies and researchers across the country that are figuring out ways to do that, which is super exciting, and I hope we'll be able to bring some of that technology and workforce training to San Antonio to scale it in the future.

00:30:11.259 --> 00:30:13.265
And does your department have?

00:30:13.265 --> 00:30:25.785
I mean, you mentioned the Savannah organization for one is there something of a national network that you feel like you're developing or have developed in these conversations around deconstruction?

00:30:26.164 --> 00:30:26.787
Absolutely.

00:30:26.787 --> 00:30:35.019
I always say that we would have never been able to achieve our deconstruction ordinance, which I can't believe I haven't said yet is the largest in North America.

00:30:35.019 --> 00:30:50.252
We are the largest city in North America to have a deconstruction ordinance, which I always like to say because we are in San Antonio and every time I come across someone on the West Coast or the East Coast or Canada or across the world that hasn't heard about our policy, they're like Texas.

00:30:50.252 --> 00:30:51.141
Really and.

00:30:51.182 --> 00:30:52.700
I'm like hell yeah in Texas.

00:30:52.700 --> 00:30:57.992
So we learned so much from the city of Portland, oregon.

00:30:57.992 --> 00:31:03.073
They were the first city in North America to adopt a policy like this in 2016.

00:31:03.073 --> 00:31:05.795
And I have to get a shout out to Sean Wood.

00:31:05.795 --> 00:31:13.623
He was basically my equivalent at the city of Portland and he's now at the EPA helping cities and communities with low carbon materials.

00:31:13.623 --> 00:31:16.008
He really helped us.

00:31:16.008 --> 00:31:31.596
You know approach our policy effort and that kind of made me realize that the only way that we're going to affect local change and something that's so new is through the resource sharing and partnership of communities around the country.

00:31:31.596 --> 00:31:42.201
So I sit on the board of a national nonprofit called Build Reuse and it's the major nonprofit in the United States that seeks to turn construction and demolition waste into local resources.

00:31:42.201 --> 00:31:53.622
So that has been my network and my safe space, if you will, to kind of get out of my bubble and learn more about how other people are approaching this really important topic.

00:31:54.884 --> 00:32:03.847
And so you may have mentioned it already, but specifically, the ordinance requires deconstruction for buildings built before 1945.

00:32:03.847 --> 00:32:08.555
Is that the extent of the ordinance and then a follow-up on that.

00:32:08.555 --> 00:32:20.351
If you were to take it further and maybe it is completely conditional, based off of the research and the strategy necessary to be able to deconstruct other buildings that were built at different eras but where would you take it further?

00:32:21.440 --> 00:32:27.499
So right now we have three phases of the ordinance that were adopted in 2022.

00:32:27.499 --> 00:32:45.405
So we're currently in the second phase and that states that any residential building fourplex or smaller, so down to single family built in 1920 anywhere in the city has to be deconstructed and 1945 in historic districts and neighborhood conservation districts, so kind of those protected zoning overlays.

00:32:45.405 --> 00:33:04.733
But our ordinance is actually expanding into its final phase, january 1 of 2025, and that will expand to 1945 and earlier anywhere in the city and go up to eight plex and smaller so kind of that missing middle housing if it's coming down and 1960 and earlier in those protected districts.

00:33:04.733 --> 00:33:15.115
So we're starting to creep into some of those newer buildings and part of the reason why it's so strategically, you know, slow growth.

00:33:15.440 --> 00:33:25.451
I always say that we wanted to take like bite-sized pieces out of our demolition stream to make sure that our workforce and our reuse ecosystem was growing.

00:33:25.451 --> 00:33:44.430
Alongside the regulation, we've seen some communities across the country that bit off more than they could chew and maybe didn't invest in workforce development or wanted to do every single building right without those strategic investments and they've had to pause or stay their ordinances because it just was too much of a disruption.

00:33:44.430 --> 00:33:50.308
So ours is very intentional and it is very much rooted in the realities.

00:33:50.308 --> 00:34:09.423
In San Antonio we looked at 10 years of demolition data to see can we hone in on a build date and a building type and a building year that started with 33% and then grew to 45% and then grew to 65% of housing demolitions to be incremental in that strategic way.

00:34:09.423 --> 00:34:15.246
So I think it was smart, even though the environmentalist in me wanted to be like let's get everything.

00:34:15.768 --> 00:34:24.179
So I think my dream and where we might go in the future this would require a future ordinance and a ton more in community engagement.

00:34:24.179 --> 00:34:33.288
Basically restarting what we did five years ago is looking into commercial structures and potentially looking into major renovations of buildings.

00:34:33.288 --> 00:34:37.884
A lot of construction and demolition waste is generated through gut rehabs.

00:34:37.884 --> 00:34:50.588
So we do have a lot of community members coming to us saying I see dumpsters and dumpsters in old homes next to me that are being completely gutted and that material is just as valuable as a house that's being fully removed.

00:34:50.588 --> 00:34:51.771
What can we do?

00:34:51.771 --> 00:34:56.612
So I think hopefully in the near future we'll be able to restart those conversations.

00:34:58.101 --> 00:35:05.335
So demolition is one category, renovation another one, and then that between residential and commercial.

00:35:05.335 --> 00:35:16.469
Is there anything that stretches to the prospect of conditions for what new builds look like one way or another, residential or commercial or is that?

00:35:16.469 --> 00:35:18.496
Would that be a different department?

00:35:19.900 --> 00:35:24.103
I think that we may co-lead on that.

00:35:24.103 --> 00:35:53.590
I'm so glad you asked that because that's also kind of on our radar 2% of their budget into public art for a new building, and we're thinking 2% reclaimed materials and some sort of visible aspect of the building like an overhang or cladding or even reuse materials for public art.

00:35:54.539 --> 00:35:55.063
So what?

00:35:55.063 --> 00:36:09.873
I always say that the deconstruction ordinance is kind of focused on the supply side, making sure that we're intercepting all of these millions of tons of materials that are going to the landfill and redirecting them back into our communities so they can be productively used.

00:36:09.873 --> 00:36:13.443
And then what you're describing is more on the demand side.

00:36:13.443 --> 00:36:22.891
How can we generate more incentives or more regulations to inspire or require people to think reuse first instead of relying on virgin materials?

00:36:23.331 --> 00:36:29.956
Right, and so where do we feel like we are in that establishing that supply chain?

00:36:29.956 --> 00:36:38.978
Is there just by no means enough supply, or is there a mismatch in the level of demand right now?

00:36:38.978 --> 00:36:44.711
It's interesting how that's just a completely different supply chain, a much more localized one, hyper localized supply chain.

00:36:44.711 --> 00:36:49.538
But where are we, do you think in that system, flowing more smoothly?

00:36:49.538 --> 00:36:50.039
Yeah.

00:36:50.039 --> 00:36:51.405
Where's the choke point?

00:36:52.380 --> 00:37:05.403
I think a big barrier right now is volume and consistency, and this is where the Material Innovation Center comes in a little bit is that we work.

00:37:05.403 --> 00:37:07.585
I love, I love working with architects.

00:37:07.585 --> 00:37:13.550
I love chatting the ear off of designers and specifiers, asking them those questions to specify reclaimed.

00:37:13.550 --> 00:37:35.815
But when we think about large buildings like community centers or apartment buildings, that requires a lot of material and a lot of consistent material, and part of the charm and excitement of reclaimed building materials is kind of the uniqueness of those.

00:37:35.815 --> 00:37:45.032
But when you're so used to an architecture industry that relies on volume and consistency, that is a remarkable barrier.

00:37:45.032 --> 00:37:48.565
And that's not just a San Antonio thing, it's really a worldwide thing.

00:37:48.565 --> 00:38:12.800
So I think we do have a lot more work to do here to you know, offer more storage or offer more investment, or incentivize more startups and establish building material innovators to invest in San Antonio and make it a circular city for our built environment, to address those two key barriers volume and consistency.

00:38:12.800 --> 00:38:20.626
Every time we open these it's a new adventure.

00:38:20.626 --> 00:38:31.217
Okay, so this is where we start getting into.

00:38:31.217 --> 00:38:35.402
Feel free to come in the super fun stuff.

00:38:35.402 --> 00:38:41.570
So every single one of these garage bays has material in it.

00:38:41.570 --> 00:38:43.813
That wasn't the case, like even just a few months ago.

00:38:43.813 --> 00:38:48.083
But I want to point out this garage first.

00:38:48.083 --> 00:39:03.043
So all of these houses at least some of them, or maybe all of them were built using salvage materials, which is like a really amazing like context, like closing that loop.

00:39:03.043 --> 00:39:23.675
Some of the houses we found like boards in the top that say Hagerstown, maryland, which was an Air Force but is an Air Force base, and I think the port has confirmed that a lot of that lumber has come from shipping crates that were shipping like airplane airplane parts to Kelly Field when it was active during World War I.

00:39:23.675 --> 00:39:26.704
So that lumber has made it into these buildings.

00:39:26.704 --> 00:39:35.101
So we like to kind of like point that out as we're talking about this campus, because it's not like that unique to use what you already have on hand, especially if it's already had one use.

00:39:35.101 --> 00:39:50.309
So that's a really fun, serendipitous moment and you can kind of see it like we'll see it in a few other bays, like you can tell that some lumber was like cobbled together when this was constructed and we've had structural engineers out here being like they don't build this like this anymore.

00:39:50.309 --> 00:39:53.702
Like it may look like a haunted house from the outside but it is solid as a rock.

00:39:53.702 --> 00:39:55.563
So we love this garage.

00:39:55.563 --> 00:40:07.016
So we get donated building materials from contractors, even homeowners, to this site.

00:40:07.016 --> 00:40:22.112
We also take materials from deconstruction training sites where we actually like train people to take down an entire building, which we're doing in October, which your students should come to, and this is some of that from, like, a house that we took down a few years ago.

00:40:22.112 --> 00:40:28.092
This is a bunch of donated gym flooring from one of our contractors which we'll figure out how to use at some point.

00:40:29.280 --> 00:40:37.014
But I think the golden materials that we as the city are consistently using are reclaimed siding like this.

00:40:37.014 --> 00:40:47.380
This is waterfall siding, super common in.

00:40:47.380 --> 00:40:56.170
So our office has a program called Rehab-O-Rama where we are able to connect contractors with deeply existing affordable housing to repair them, and then our neighborhood and housing services department uses HUD funding to do similar projects.

00:40:56.170 --> 00:41:07.704
Those ones are like basically completely rehabbing an existing building and we've already been able to matchmake materials like we're facilitators in a lot of ways.

00:41:07.704 --> 00:41:25.331
So if we see a project that is going to be deconstructed, we'll connect with the contractor and say, hey, like we need x linear feet of this siding to repair a building that nhsd needs restored, and they'll be like okay, we'll donate it to you and then we'll plug that in to the project.

00:41:25.331 --> 00:41:28.775
So we've actually seen that happen a few times already.

00:41:32.820 --> 00:41:44.735
Where might there be some other savings for us in using more of these reclaimed materials that we wouldn't otherwise consider?

00:41:45.659 --> 00:42:28.123
Yeah, I think one aspect that I pretty consistently think about is that if we use more of the materials that are readily available in our communities I started referring to, like our houses, like the ones that are being deconstructed as urban forests because they were constructed of old growth lumber, you know, that was felled hundreds of years ago and they grew for thousands of years in some ways, and if we use more reclaimed materials, it reduces the demand for virgin materials, whether that be virgin forests and virgin lumber or, more commonly right now in our society is plastic and petroleum based building materials.

00:42:28.364 --> 00:42:46.061
So I think that's one thing that we try to elevate more often is that if you go more reclaimed and if we do that more as a society, then we're leveraging more of the resources that already exist to your point hyperlocally, instead of relying on mining our earth for more.

00:42:46.061 --> 00:42:49.467
So, I think that's one interesting way of considering it.

00:42:50.269 --> 00:43:08.643
And so do you imagine that, like the sticker shock would be too high for developers or anything like that from the get-go, or perhaps with the greater prevalence of reclaimed materials that costs would go down greater prevalence of reclaimed materials, that costs would go down.

00:43:08.663 --> 00:43:16.925
Yeah, so I think COVID was a really big eye-opener, if you recall, back in 2021, 2022, or if you blocked it out, like me, which is great for our mental health.

00:43:16.925 --> 00:43:42.068
But there was such a barrier price-wise and access-wise for construction materials because a lot of people were pursuing those kind of projects and, as a result, supply chains were choked in various different ways and, more importantly, lead times just the time it would take to access those materials became longer and time is money in the development world.

00:43:42.708 --> 00:44:02.351
So I think that was a really big eye opener on, like how much we rely on those worldwide supply chains and largely as a consumer, as a homeowner myself like I have no idea where, like my West Elm table came from, I have no idea where those materials had to go or travel to be put together.

00:44:02.351 --> 00:44:15.943
But if we're relying on this hyper local source, especially now that we have more materials entering the San Antonio ecosystem because of deconstruction, it just makes us more resilient as a community when we're talking about access to those materials.

00:44:15.943 --> 00:44:22.987
So the more materials we have in our ecosystem instead of going to the landfill, the more accessible they are and the more affordable they can be.

00:44:22.987 --> 00:44:25.592
So that's a really big focus for us too.

00:44:26.579 --> 00:44:37.630
And so then, currently on the design and build side architects, developers or otherwise is the door open in some regard.

00:44:37.630 --> 00:44:46.226
If they wanted to get involved in using more reclaimed materials and thinking about projects that way, when would they get started?

00:44:46.226 --> 00:44:47.409
Do they reach out to you?

00:44:48.050 --> 00:45:07.146
Yes, I feel like I'm like a, not a call center, but like I always get emails multiple times a week or calls from both property owners and even developers, like affordable housing developers or developers that are looking for something that is uniquely San Antonio right.

00:45:07.146 --> 00:45:26.681
I also think this is a bit of a diversion, but just to emphasize how I think our building industry and our design industry is kind of shifting away from, like, the builder grade style that was so prevalent in the past decade or so into something that is more locally true to where we are.

00:45:26.681 --> 00:45:40.304
So we have a lot of people reaching out to us saying I want to build a custom curtain wall out of reclaimed lumber from a local building, because you can't manufacture authenticity.

00:45:40.304 --> 00:45:49.244
Or, more commonly, we have property owners saying I need to restore my home or I'm building in addition to my 1920s building.

00:45:49.244 --> 00:45:54.724
I want to use the same hardwood, I want to use the same siding, I want to use similar doors.

00:45:54.724 --> 00:45:56.268
Where can I find that?

00:45:56.507 --> 00:46:04.291
And we're very fortunate to be able to point to a lot of reclaimed stores and deconstruction contractors that can supply that for people.

00:46:04.291 --> 00:46:16.148
So the door is consistently open and one of my favorite examples about deconstruction in practice is, I said at the beginning that demolition happens in a day or two.

00:46:16.148 --> 00:46:21.228
It's very quick, it's very violent, it's very fracturing and fracturing emotionally and physically.

00:46:21.228 --> 00:46:23.041
You're like splintering all of those materials.

00:46:23.041 --> 00:46:23.923
You can't reuse them.

00:46:23.923 --> 00:46:33.068
But when you slow down that process, it's every single deconstruction project without fail, especially in a dense legacy community.

00:46:33.068 --> 00:46:35.273
Neighbors shop this site.

00:46:35.739 --> 00:46:49.454
I started comparing it to like knocking on your neighbor's door for a cup of sugar, but now you're knocking on your neighbor's door for some shiplap or for some siding, and that happens every single time because you're affording that process to happen.

00:46:49.454 --> 00:46:52.670
And that, to me, is the definition of a microcircular economy.

00:46:52.670 --> 00:46:59.047
Like you can't create a better ecosystem footprint wise than that.

00:46:59.047 --> 00:47:02.998
So the more we do that, the more people can access that.

00:47:02.998 --> 00:47:08.211
And then I will say that there's a growing trend of people just being more cognizant that that's an option.

00:47:09.501 --> 00:47:27.487
Well, and it seems like with that opportunity just to be able to more sensibly use and reuse the materials that exist within your own community, your own ecosystem, seems like a much greater sense of pride can grow in the built environment that surrounds you.

00:47:27.487 --> 00:47:57.965
Like you said, it's already something that can be so devastating as things are demolished and changed and something new is there that may not have the same sort of cohesive look and feel and kind of cultural character, and so it seems like there's a great opportunity for us, as San Antonians, to take pride in that and start to add a little bit of our reclaimed materials to our new projects and renovations and those kinds of things.

00:47:57.965 --> 00:48:27.242
Stephanie, I'm curious to get to your work outside your day job too, the nonprofit organization that you co-founded, and I'd like to get to that by, as well, framing it in a question why do you think San Antonio and maybe already layered through our conversation thus far, but why do you think this city, is so apt and well-suited to advance this movement for a more circular economy?

00:48:28.123 --> 00:48:28.525
Circular.

00:48:28.525 --> 00:48:47.867
San Antonio, like you mentioned, is a non-profit organization that really seeks to help San Antonio transition to a more circular city, and what that really means is to tip the scales in favor of reuse instead of kind of the linear economy that we're used to, which is single use over consumption, a lot of waste.

00:48:47.867 --> 00:48:51.722
And that is not just a San Antonio problem, it's a worldwide problem.

00:48:51.722 --> 00:49:07.344
But I know from my own work and working locally and kind of leveraging the skills and energy of our community and the talents as well, is that if we come together for this common cause, we can move that needle.

00:49:07.344 --> 00:49:30.530
And I think that San Antonio is the perfect city for this to happen, because we value our existing resources in a very unique way compared to other cities that I've visited or I've lived in, and I think some of that stems from the big city, small town identity that we're so proud of, where people are connected to literally everyone.

00:49:30.530 --> 00:49:44.608
It shocks me every day, in every conversation that I have, is that there's six degrees of everyone that lives in San Antonio and so there's already this kind of cohesive network of people being able to tap into their skills and abilities and interests.

00:49:44.608 --> 00:50:16.911
But then I also think it stems from, honestly, the fact that we're a world heritage city and there's such an important identity tied to our cultural heritage, and I mean every single layer of our cultural heritage, even if it's a little bit messy and complicated, because that identity that we've been able to maintain in our built environment and our cultural legacy is the foundation for us to continue to reinvest in what makes us unique and what drives our local industries.

00:50:17.110 --> 00:50:23.612
So one big thing that Circular San Antonio is trying to do is elevate the businesses that are truly local.

00:50:23.612 --> 00:50:26.563
San Antonio is trying to do is elevate the businesses that are truly local right.

00:50:26.563 --> 00:50:35.275
So we think about the shoe cobblers, the seamstresses, the many general contractors that rehab our existing buildings, the deconstruction contractors that we're building up locally.

00:50:35.275 --> 00:50:43.744
These are people that live here, that work here, that pay taxes here, that spend money here and believe that San Antonio is where they want to be.

00:50:43.744 --> 00:50:50.489
And if we invest in more of those people in those industries, you know that's what circularity is.

00:50:50.489 --> 00:51:00.003
So I think leveraging kind of the identity and the community and the cohesion that is so unique to this city is the key to unlocking more reefs.

00:51:01.405 --> 00:51:01.867
I love that.

00:51:01.867 --> 00:51:04.590
Well, and Stephanie, I'm curious for more reefs.

00:51:04.590 --> 00:51:06.554
I love that, well, and, stephanie, I'm curious for folks listening or watching.

00:51:06.554 --> 00:51:15.103
What are some physical projects that exist in San Antonio?

00:51:15.103 --> 00:51:27.271
If someone was curious to see this very tangibly, either from what you think really emphasizes circularity, the principles of circularity, or, likewise, deconstruction, what's something that someone could go see in San Antonio that would reflect that?

00:51:28.494 --> 00:51:37.452
I think a really big example is something that our office launched a few years ago, which is called our Living Heritage Trades Academy.

00:51:37.452 --> 00:51:39.481
So related to circularity and having a workforce to reinvest in our buildings.

00:51:39.481 --> 00:51:48.389
Related to circularity and having a workforce to reinvest in our buildings most of the people that work in construction trades are 45 or older.

00:51:49.150 --> 00:51:52.693
And out of 100 people on a construction site, only one is a woman.

00:51:52.693 --> 00:52:12.838
So these two dimensions are intertwined in a lot of different ways and the only way that we can really make sure that these resources stay around is to invest in the people that dedicate their time and craft and skill to doing that work.

00:52:12.838 --> 00:52:16.480
So we offer a lot of different employment pathways through our Trades Academy, whether it's reusing windows, restoring windows, doing deconstruction, training.

00:52:16.480 --> 00:52:26.574
But we also have a lot of community workshops where, even if you don't want this to be your business, but you want to learn a little bit more about how your house works and lives and breathes and ages that's what we're here for.

00:52:26.996 --> 00:52:32.588
So I'm always about elevating, kind of the hands-on way for people to play and learn.

00:52:32.588 --> 00:52:35.882
So I think that's one big way that people can get involved.

00:52:35.882 --> 00:52:58.896
But then I always encourage people to stop by and kind of just watch a house being restored or a house being deconstructed, because you can learn so much about that incredible trade and maybe see some things that you've never seen before, like a lumber stamp or a weird archaeological find, like a kerosene lamp that's in your front yard, which is something that actually happened to me.

00:52:58.896 --> 00:53:27.403
So there's just so much to uncover by learning more about how our buildings are restored and the materials kept in our environment, construction and the possibilities of circularity advancing in San Antonio.

00:53:27.483 --> 00:53:35.867
If you could wave a magic wand and embed one bit of understanding, or one kind of eye-opening learning for general San Antonians, what would that be?

00:53:35.867 --> 00:53:42.068
What would you want people to see or understand that is possible in San Antonio that they may not currently?

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The landfill doesn't deserve these materials.

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Our communities do, and of course I connect that with building materials, but it could mean any material that we so readily throw away, whether it's plastic or clothes or electronics, and really thinking about how those systems don't have to be the way they are.

00:54:02.239 --> 00:54:03.206
And a lot of the solutions lie in our backyard.

00:54:03.206 --> 00:54:05.739
We don't have to be the way they are and a lot of the solutions lie in our backyard.

00:54:05.739 --> 00:54:20.871
We don't have to rely on federal laws, although those would be awesome but we can kind of seek to reorient those really wasteful systems just by leveraging our own skills and connections here.

00:54:20.871 --> 00:54:35.088
So I just always challenge people to look at what is unseen, which is typically our waste system, where you put stuff at the front of your yard or the back of your yard and somehow it magically disappears and you never see it again.

00:54:35.088 --> 00:54:42.463
To think about how we can restructure those systems and keep those materials for us, Because you can't build a community around a landfill.

00:54:42.463 --> 00:54:45.811
You can definitely build community around sharing and reuse.

00:54:58.121 --> 00:55:07.164
San Antonio, I think, is a scrappy city, one whose citizens pride themselves on their resourcefulness and, in some ways too, frugality.

00:55:07.164 --> 00:55:12.806
As a city, we seem to understand the phrase what's old is new again better than most.

00:55:12.806 --> 00:55:19.166
We watch cities across the state and country, chase what's modern and multiply.

00:55:19.166 --> 00:55:26.811
Whether it's Washington, idaho, colorado or Texas, you can walk through some neighborhoods and not know which state you're in.

00:55:26.811 --> 00:55:38.152
Same aesthetic, same font on the house number, maybe even a Tesla in the driveway For our homes, our buildings, libraries, office spaces, schools or whatever else.

00:55:38.152 --> 00:55:44.324
There's no need or desire for us to have some modern look, just a San Antonio one.

00:55:44.324 --> 00:55:50.688
Deconstruction and reuse allow us to act more in line with our values as a city.

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A city that values its heritage, its history and finds unique and creative ways to tell those stories in both our built and lived environments.

00:56:00.483 --> 00:56:08.844
A city that holds great value in what is truly invaluable Family, friends, fiesta, our community.

00:56:08.844 --> 00:56:17.894
A city generous in spirit and service, yet highly prudent with materials, cautious and rightfully so about letting a good thing go to waste.

00:56:17.894 --> 00:56:22.125
I've seen that every time the city's bulky item collection week comes around.

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San Antonio can and should become the circular city, because we have a unique shared identity of doing things in and for our community, a city that honors, celebrates and explores what's historic, what's timeless, while trends take hold everywhere else.

00:56:42.273 --> 00:57:03.525
By first seeing what can be done, what can be achieved with what's lying around, which feels quintessentially San Antonio, we can turn the linear approach of take, make and waste into a loop, with every exit leading back to San Antonio.

00:57:03.525 --> 00:57:20.561
All right, y'all.

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That's a wrap for this episode of Ensemble Texas.

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I want to extend an additional thank you to our guest today, stephanie Phillips, for sharing her expertise and passion for building a more circular San Antonio.

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It's inspiring to hear about the strides we're making toward a city that values reuse over waste, whether that's through deconstruction or broader circular economy initiatives.

00:57:38.181 --> 00:57:42.385
As Stephanie reminded us, the landfill doesn't deserve our materials.

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Our communities do.

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It's a powerful call to action, especially as San Antonio continues to grow and evolve.

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We can preserve our culture, create jobs and build a more sustainable future, all by rethinking how we handle what we often call waste.

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If you enjoyed today's conversation, don't forget to check out Circular San Antonio and the city's deconstruction programs.

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You can find links in the show notes or visit podcastsensembletexascom for more information.

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Lastly, if you're not already subscribed, join me each week as we dive deeper into the people, places and stories shaping San Antonio's future.

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Drop us an email at sponsor at EnsembleTexascom to explore how we can work together.

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Thanks for listening or watching.

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Until next time.