ROUND TABLE REVIEW 25
STRUCTURAL ENGINEERING Delegates agreed that to achieve the Government’s proposed goal of 25% reused material in projects, there would need to be a focus on reusing building structures
manufacturers needed to look at incentives for customers to return materials, as they “can’t wait for you to come and pick them up.” Architect Simon Foxell said the “most obvious business model”
was the “well developed rental market for fl oor fi nishes, a direct transfer of new for old products.” Wilson said that Amtico’s takeback scheme saw around 20% being recycled due to the products’ installation methods, with around 80% downcycled. He said there were challenges with recycling at scale due to bespoke designs, but that using a certain screed interface would enable a product to be lifted for reuse as “pretty much virgin material.” Foxell agreed that the systems where “materials get locked together,” were where problems with recycling arose. Mike Leonard said that reusing products raised issues around their traceability, once a building was sold for example, and wondered whether Golden Thread approaches to asset management could be the answer. Wilson said Amtico’s takeback scheme included the company recycling other fi rms’ products when required. Olivia Daw cited the example of Saint-Gobain providing “skips and segregation advice” to contractors, as well as “making it very clear what needs to happen early on for them to be able to take back that product.” She said that this helped reduced the “friction” which was caused by adding “any additional processes” for contractors, and avoided arguments later on in projects. She also advocated similar clarity in possible incentives introduced for manufacturers, to help them drive circularity within individual product lines.
Soprema directly levelled their question at the Government, asking whether there was a need for a more legislative ‘stick’ based approach to drive circularity in construction. Umendra Singh
from Soprema asked: “Does everyone feel there needs to be more done through legislation? They have probably lost the appetite for carrots, or a certain size or shape, so some stick is required?” Nick Haughton of Sapphire said that the amount of new requirements being imposed on the sector recently could be endangering businesses’ sustainability, and that circularity was competing with a range of other priorities. “The average manufacturer who supplies into HRBs has roughly seen about 40% of their revenue slip, which means that they’re not being able to invoice 40% of what they have in factories.” He added, “It’s a huge challenge to the industry.”
Umendra Singh pushed back against the idea of an opposition between driving circularity and the building safety agenda, saying “circularity is also saving life.” Debbie said that labour “should be viewed as a renewable, and hopefully what we could end up with is that the actual end cost isn’t any different, but you’re actually penalising harmful products, harmful materials, harmful practices.”
Mike Leonard steered the topic away from legislation towards incentivising building users – “rather than handing over lots of new technology and kit and hoping everything will be fi ne, can we work more collectively with the people who are living in our buildings, and make them think about what they do around the circular economy that could have a huge effect, without legislation, without more regulation, more with nudges?” Simon Foxell of The Architects Practice concluded on the power of standards: “There is also something about having good standards that everyone can comply with and know what to do, that actually is cost effective, rather than being a burden. We’ve got to the
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