ROUND TABLE REVIEW: PRACTICAL SOLUTIONS FOR HARNESSING THE CIRCULAR ECONOMY AT SCALE 37
CIRCLING BACK, BUT PUSHING FORWARD The multi-disciplinary round table reasserted some of the issues for the construction industry, but offered some inspiring examples of circularity success
Products said that although recycling was laudable in some respects, it faced more constraints than full material reuse; therefore ‘greenwash’ was a risk.
She told the group: “Where with recycling, you get the intensity of the energy and processes, reuse in situ is very low carbon.” However, she added that there also needed to be differentiation between reuse in situ and putting reused products back onto the market – essentially circularity could not be seen as one catch-all, and there were a variety of relative carbon saving possibilities. And, added Ward, the overarching problem is that where the industry may “design with circularity in mind, we have to do something with all the existing buildings and materials that haven’t.” Chris Halligan of the Chartered Institute of Architectural
Technologists asserted that currently, most material reuse was “downcycling,” i.e. products converted into others of lower value, and there was “a lot of greenwash” about buildings’ circularity credentials. “There are thousands of buildings out there with ticks and badges saying how sustainable they are, but if you look closely, they’re not.” He also cited major ratings systems such as BREEAM in this context, which could lead to performance specifi cations of products which in themselves were less sustainable.
Success stories like circularity in modular construction and reuse of entire buildings were cited, but also the fact that the industry was working at low margins, and was resistant to the systemic change required to increase reuse of buildings and materials. Halligan: “The industry is conservative, and moves very slowly; it fears change. A lot of the answers are out there already, but aren’t being adopted.” He offered the suggestion that, with “climatic catastrophe“ a possibility by the end of the century, circular approaches were urgently needed in the mainstream, but wouldn’t happen without major interventions in the market. “At the moment, end of life options are not costed, there’s no profi t in it.” Instead, said Halligan, “If every
material, every project, was forced to take into account the cost of the end of life situation, all of a sudden everything will be sustainable.” He said however that currently, “hardly any guides or accreditation systems take end of life options into account.”
Following London’s lead
Delegates celebrated the successes which London clients and boroughs have achieved on circularity, with the GLA promoting retrofi t and reuse over recycling for developments. They also acknowledged a contrast with the rest of the country. However, Pauline Metivier of ReLondon said that while there were “front runner developers” in the capital who were proving the concept by measuring circularity on projects, even London was only doing reuse in a “very minor fashion, because there is no market at scale.”
She said a lack of demand meant a lack of supply, with the former stemming from “a lack of [central] planning,” and that the industry was “at a juncture where there needs to be much more alignment about what good looks like.”
Nick Haughton referred to a Government circularity scheme in the Netherlands which had been “fairly widely adopted on larger residential schemes; they get extra points for certain sustainability credentials – one of the big factors is reuse of materials.”Delegates such as Haughton cited “commercial barriers” to building reuse, which could be as straightforward as building elements not meeting architects’ aesthetic requirements, and their refurbishment leading to a “bunch of other challenges.” Haughton added that “getting reused elements underwritten by structural engineers” wa a further constraint. Stephanie Palmer, head of sustainability at Wienerberger, and also chair of ISEP’s Circular Economy Steering Group, explained how London was setting the agenda. “It is pretty far ahead because the GLA has provided a clear framework for decision making.” She said
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