DELIVERING THE CIRCULAR ECONOMY A TOOLKIT FOR POLICYMAKERS

More documents

Recommendations

Info

118 • DELIVERING THE CIRCULAR ECONOMY – A TOOLKIT FOR POLICYMAKERS and upgrade, which would enable the use of some materials with a lower environmental footprint, e.g. glulam beams as load-bearing construction elements. • Use of recycled materials. Even though few buildings today have been constructed with deconstruction and reuse in mind, it is possible to recover significant quantities construction materials and use them for new buildings. The US EPA’s buildings One and Two Potomac Yard in Arlington, VA, were built using 27% recycled content – including slag concrete aggregate, fly ash, and gypsum wallboard. 190 Examples of companies including recycled industrial materials in their products are insulation manufacturer Rockwool 191 as well as DIRTT 192 (see above). A relevant case example from Denmark is the ‘Upcycle house’, built using processed recycled materials and reducing the overall CO 2 emissions by 86% compared to the building of a benchmark house. 193 As the reuse of components and recycling of materials proliferates and a new reverse cycle ecosystem emerges, a market will emerge for material ‘brokers’ connecting suppliers with buyers, as with the Scottish Material Brokearge Service 194 . There are two challenges to be overcome when reusing/recycling materials from existing buildings: the challenge of hazardous chemicals (including those no longer permitted in building materials today); and the technical performance of components/materials not designed for reuse/recycling. 195 • New business models. The examples above introduce the concept of performance contracts in the real estate sector: the property owner does not necessarily own all materials and systems in the building and might instead buy utility (e.g. lux-hours instead of light fixtures). • Deconstruction. In Japan, Taisei Corporation has demonstrated that deconstruction is possible even for tall buildings such as The Grand Prince Hotel Akasaka. A Taisei-developed approach deconstructed the 141-meter building from the top down, reducing carbon emissions of the deconstruction process by 85%. 196 Employing these best practices in the construction and real estate sector, Denmark could increasingly use recovered building components and materials in more valuable cycles than downgrading recycling. Examples of value retention already exist; Skive municipality runs a project to improve the reuse of old construction components by incorporating new targets in the municipality’s 2015–24 waste management strategy and creating an environment for new business models centred on material looping, 197 and The Fund for Green Business Development has funded a partnership where innovative public procurement is used to increase the reuse of building components and materials in new public building projects. 198 In addition, the Danish Eco-Innovation Program funds a number of project around, among others, using more reusable and recyclable materials in buildings. 199 190 US Environmental Protection Agency, Using Recycled Industrial Materials in Buildings (2008). 191 sustainability.rockwool.com/environment/recycling/ 192 www.dirtt.net/leed/_docs/DIRTT-MaterialsAndProduction_v1-2.pdf. DIRTT pledges to add more recycled content into their materials every year. 193 The Upcycle House was built In collaboration between Realdania Byg and Lendager Architects. www.archdaily.com/458245/upcycle-house-lendager-arkitekter/ 194 The Scottish Material Brokerage Service began operating in January 2015. Its aims are twofold: (i) to deliver collaborative contracts for waste and recyclable materials from Scottish local authorities and other public bodies of sufficient scale to help them achieve better value for money, and reduce risk from price volatility; (ii) to create the business conditions for investment in domestic reprocessing by providing certainty in the volume and duration of supply of valuable materials. See www.zerowastescotland.org.uk/brokerage 195 These challenges are currently investigated under the Danish Government’s strategy for construction. Danish Ministry of Climate, Energy and Building, Towards a stronger construction sector in Denmark (2014). 196 See for example www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2013-01/15/japan-eco-demolition; www.taisei.co.jp/english/ csr/hinsitu/jirei_hinsitu.html. No information was found on the potential for reuse of the deconstructed building components. 197 Skive municipality, Afslutningsrapport Projekt Genbyg Skive (2015). 198 groenomstilling.erhvervsstyrelsen.dk/cases/962460 199 ecoinnovation.dk/mudp-indsats-og-tilskud/miljoetemaer-udfordringer-og-teknologiske-muligheder/%C3%B- 8kologisk-og-baeredygtigt-byggeri/tilskudsprojekter/
DELIVERING THE CIRCULAR ECONOMY – A TOOLKIT FOR POLICYMAKERS • 119 Designing for disassembly could be enabled by better coordination and alignment of incentives across the value chain. Digital material passports (already introduced in Denmark by Maersk as described in Section 3.1) and leasing could become the new norm, driven by a change in business models and emergence of material brokers who link material supply and demand in the reverse supply chain. By 2035 (2020), looping of materials could be increased to 15% (5%) by weight, resulting in 30% material cost savings (adding 5% additional labour cost). At this adoption rate, modelling suggests the construction sector could save EUR 100–150 million annually. 200 These findings give a directional view of the magnitude of this opportunity for Denmark. They rely by necessity on a number of assumptions, the most important of which are detailed in Appendix B. BARRIERS AND POTENTIAL POLICY OPTIONS The following paragraphs provide an initial perspective on the barriers limiting the ‘reuse and high-value recycling of components and materials’ opportunity (see Section 2.2.4 for the barriers framework). A wide range of barriers prevent increasing rates of component and material reuse in the construction sector. Chief among them is the structure of the industry itself, which leads to split incentives along the value chain. There is limited vertical integration and each player – including the investor, architect, developer, engineer, (sub)contractor, owner and tenant – naturally maximizes their own profits at the expense of the others. Since designing for circularity requires some alignment of incentives to close the loop in the value chain, not having such incentives makes the economic case for reuse difficult to make. The fragmentation of the industry also leads to the barriers of transaction costs and imperfect information: the flow of information and resources necessary to provide a system of design for disassembly and reverse logistics is difficult to achieve. Digital information on the materials used in component production that would be very helpful at the point of refurbishment or demolition is lacking or unevenly distributed: while Building Information Modelling approaches are developing, they are not yet in widespread use. 201 While buildings can already be designed for disassembly, additional technological progress in the production of circular, separable materials and components could accelerate the concept’s applicability. Acceptance of such technological advances in the industry could be aided by demonstration that new materials/components meet required technical specifications and are as practical to work with as those that they replace. It would also be helpful if the true environmental costs of using virgin, finite materials were reflected in their market prices. Finally there are inertia factors – pointed out by a range of industry experts – in the construction industry in the form of customs and habits and a lack of the requisite capabilities and skills that make reuse difficult to implement. To address these barriers, the following policy options could be further investigated. These options are the result of an initial assessment of how cost-effectively different policy options might overcome the identified barriers (see Section 2.3.3): • Complementing building codes with ratings and targets as laid out in Section 3.3.1. • Funding industry-wide training programmes how to develop loops in construction, such as minimising and sorting construction waste targeting actors along the entire value chain (i.e. everybody from architects to sub-contractors working on the ground). • Supporting the creation of material inventory software to keep track of the materials used in construction, maintenance, and renovation projects from start to finish and provide information on their lifetime impacts and opportunities for 200 This sector-specific impact does not include indirect effects, e.g. on supply chains, that are captured in the economy-wide CGE modelling. 201 UK Government, Building Information Modelling (2012).
Page 1:
DRAFT VERSION (June 12, 2015) • C
Page 4 and 5:
4 • DELIVERING THE CIRCULAR ECONO
Page 6 and 7:
Page 8 and 9:
Page 10 and 11:
10 • DELIVERING THE CIRCULAR ECON
Page 12 and 13:
Page 14 and 15:
Page 16 and 17:
Page 18 and 19:
Page 20 and 21:
Page 22 and 23:
Page 24 and 25:
Page 26 and 27:
Page 28 and 29:
Page 30 and 31:
Page 32 and 33:
Page 34 and 35:
Page 36 and 37:
Page 39 and 40:
DELIVERING THE CIRCULAR ECONOMY - A
Page 41 and 42:
Page 43 and 44:
Page 45 and 46:
Page 47 and 48:
Page 49 and 50:
Page 51 and 52:
Page 53 and 54:
Page 55 and 56:
Page 57 and 58:
Page 59 and 60:
Page 61 and 62:
Page 63 and 64:
Page 65 and 66:
Page 67 and 68: DELIVERING THE CIRCULAR ECONOMY - A
Page 89: DELIVERING THE CIRCULAR ECONOMY - A
Page 92 and 93: 92 • DELIVERING THE CIRCULAR ECON
Page 100 and 101: 100 • DELIVERING THE CIRCULAR ECO
Page 169 and 170:
Page 171 and 172:
Page 173 and 174:
Page 175 and 176:
Page 177 and 178:
show all

DELIVERING THE CIRCULAR ECONOMY A TOOLKIT FOR POLICYMAKERS

Create successful ePaper yourself

Delete template?

Save as template?