Professor David Farrier

Everything that reaches that end point, if we don't find a new use for it, will end in landfills.

something like 40% of global carbon emissions come from the construction industry, whether it's mining, manufacturing, construction itself, and to an extent in habitation as well.

But the whole process, and it's very linear.

It's basically, it's land, mining to landfill.

And the birds offer us this wonderful example of a way to create a kind of circular economy for the construction industry.

And there's a principle at work here, you know, a kind of deep evolutionary principle.

It's not... I mean, the birds are really taking advantage of something in their environment, but we can see this principle happening at the heart of every evolutionary process.

It's called exaptation, and it basically means finding a new use for an existing characteristic.

So the first...

Feathered animals evolved feathers, these new features for insulation.

They were an adaptation.

Yes.

Adaptions to a certain climate, X-apted to find this whole new form of mobility.

And so X-aptation puts repurposing at the heart of flight.

evolution and the birds are just want this little chink of light into how this might potentially be a way to rethink our whole relationship with the um with the urban environment you know could we have a circular construction industry and there are wonderful examples of you know local examples um of of how we where we see this in action uh and the one of my favorites is here in edinburgh

And I was actually there this weekend to watch a concert.

It's called Piano Drome.

So two musicians, Tim Vincent Smith and Matthew Wright, noticed that there were hundreds of upright pianos in Edinburgh that reached the end of their kind of playable life, if you like.

And nobody wanted them.

And they were going into landfill and they just couldn't tolerate this.