40 ROUND TABLE REVIEW: PRACTICAL SOLUTIONS FOR HARNESSING THE CIRCULAR ECONOMY AT SCALE
STRUCTURAL RE-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
business imperatives in the UK lead to more tokenistic efforts, said Nick Haughton, in the absence of comprehensive schemes such as are being used overseas. “Should we be knocking down the buildings we are building today to make aggregate?,” he asked. “It seems ridiculous, but unless we are doing something like the Netherlands, the capitalist procurement process will drive us towards the minor things.” Debbie Ward described the materials ‘harvesting’ approach to provide a systematic inventory of reused materials. “It’s knowing what’s in your asset, and not leaving it till the pre-Demolition Audit stage,” she said. When major works are planned, a clear process would enable the market to see “we’re going to have x number of structural steel beams, bricks, whatever; and potentially marry up the materials that are already available within the geography of where you’re doing your project, and then fi ll the gaps with new.” However, she said this wasn’t yet available: “At the moment there’s not enough knowledge of the existing materials, so you are spec’ing all materials new and potentially picking up the odd bit of existing material, if you can.” She said that the driver for increasing circularity would “always come down to cost” and that subsidies were needed to offset the cost increases of reuse. An architect by training, Olivia Daw explained how she has taken a career shift responding to the need for the industry to fully embrace reuse of materials, and plug some of the gap Ward identifi ed. She is now Materials Audit Lead at Material Index, a team of contractors, architects, engineers and software developers focused on enabling material reuse at scale, which catalogues buildings’ materials before deconstruction, provides 3D audits for BREEAM, and GLA planning applications. However, she said that increasingly, clients are using their auditing services “to just increase reuse or know the value of
their existing asset.” Daw added: “We are seeing more and more demand for reused materials, so what we are trying to do is connect all the dots.” This means unlocking more potential for clients to “offer up materials to the reclamation industry, in turn offering specifi ers the ability to specify them.”
As well as offering a range of information such as on embodied
carbon, Material Index also provides an online marketplace of reclaimed and refurbished materials. Daw said that their services have been taken up particularly by larger commercial clients such as British Land and Derwent, but also in the education sector (universities), residential, smaller offi ce and industrial buildings. She captured the realities of achieving the ambitions of Government, who have stated they are looking to drive circularity far wider. “Policy is driving diversion from landfi ll and setting reuse targets; Westminster has mentioned achieving 25% reuse by mass. To achieve something like that, you really have to look at reusing structure.”
Growing the circular economy so it becomes a mainstream proposition in construction comes down to realistic incentives for the supply chain, but arguably more importantly, the end client, from commercial clients to homebuyers. Delegates such as Ian Pritchett of Greencore highlighted the role of government incentives, and industry-based fi nance schemes such as the Greener Homes Alliance developed by Octopus and Homes England to provide a 1.25% discount on homes for developers, as being crucial. Circularity incentives could include measures like preferential development fi nance or adjustments to stamp duty or council tax, as advocated by Ian Pritchett. Such ‘behavioural economics’ interventions were going to be key going forward, he said, although politically controversial.
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