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Team: Dillon Pranger (PI), Jordan Campbell, Cody Norman, Eric Roberson 

Decon/Recon Lab Team Members: Isac Colta

Collaborators: Redemptive Plastics, Alt Space Chicago

The construction industry stands at a critical inflection point in addressing one of our nation's most pressing environmental challenges. The built environment is among the world's largest consumers of raw materials, with buildings and construction accounting for approximately 40% of global material resource use. In addition to our industry’s habit of consumption, construction and demolition (C&D) activities generate about one-third of the total waste annually in the United States, creating an urgent environmental and economic challenge that demands innovative solutions.

Due to the finite amount of material left on this planet, we need to transition our industry’s habits from a linear system of take-make-waste to a circular economy where building materials can be reused over and over again. This transition represents not just an environmental imperative but a significant economic opportunity within the trillion-dollar global construction materials market. While the gap between market potential and current practices may seem impossible to overcome, the development of new architectural products aimed at promoting material recovery and reuse instead of relying solely on raw material extraction or current recycling practices provide a hopeful path forward.

Conscious Cladding represents a transformative approach to one of our most overlooked resources: common household plastic waste. Through a novel process of remanufacturing and transformation, this project features the development of nonstructural panels made from post-consumer HDPE plastic waste. In the United States, plastic recycling rates remain among the lowest of all Municipal Solid Waste (MSW), at only 8.4%. This staggeringly low rate represents not just a failure of current systems, but an extraordinary opportunity to reimagine how we view and use these materials. Unlike current recycling practices, which often degrade material quality and require energy-intensive reprocessing, our approach focuses on maintaining source materials at their highest value while creating a building certified product with 100% recycled content. By developing building materials that can be endlessly recycled while considering performance and aesthetics, we’re not only creating a beautiful and function product – we're establishing a new model for sustainable construction that can be replicated across the industry. 

Funded by NSF Accelerating Research Translation (ART) + Innovation Corp (I-CORP) Programs