46 | Panel Perspectives: HONEXT


Above: HONEXT boards used as partition walls at Expormim’s stand at Salone del Mobile in Milan PHOTO: EXPORMIM


Two years later, this premise remains


totally valid and the necessity for innovation in materials and the speed of change is a real driver, as we witness an explosion in global population and construction needs. Traditional raw material sources are essentially finite, and it is critical that new options emerge, which is why this updated report on the Barcelona-based company HONEXT Material SL, producers of HONEXT is timely. In November 2022, in Sharm El-Sheikh,


Egypt’s government hosted the 27th session of the Conference of the Parties of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC -COP 27) and was addressing issues within the construction industry specifically to effectively tackle the global challenge of climate change. It was reported that the built environment is a primary consumer of four of the five materials that account for 55% of the world’s industrial carbon emissions. Decarbonising the built environment is urgent to reach the Paris Agreement target of keeping global warming below 1.5O


C .


Today it is generally acknowledged that the sector could reduce these emissions by embracing the principles of a circular economy, including material substitution. From the separate ‘Circularity Gap Report’ subsequently presented in January 2023 came the data showing that the planet is now home to around 8 billion people – and in sheltering, feeding, transporting, and clothing these billions, the global economy


consumes a landmark 100 billion tonnes of materials per year. By 2050 material extraction and use is


expected to double relative to 2015 levels, threatening a total breakdown of Earth’s life support systems, which are already at a breaking point. Without material management strategies that keep us within planetary boundaries, the UN has warned of ‘total societal collapse’, driven by concurrent climate change disasters, economic vulnerabilities, political instabilities, and ecosystem failures. A crucial solution to address this challenge is a circular economy: more than just recycling, increases in secondary material use must be matched by a systemic approach to smart material management that enables doing more with less, using for longer and substituting with sustainably managed regenerative materials. By upgrading to a model that maximises the value that we extract from our precious materials, we can better ensure the well-being of present and future generations, while respecting the boundaries of our planet. The current state of circularity worldwide,


total material extraction is on the rise: it more than tripled since 1970, but almost doubled since the year 2000 – reaching 100 billion tonnes today. This growth is not solely due to the global population doubling since 1970, as per-person material use has only increased by a factor of 1.7. For instance, while virgin material demand in 1970 was around 7.4 tonnes per person, far below today’s approximately 12 tonnes, this growth


WBPI | April/May 2023 | www.wbpionline.com


in per-person material demand has not been evenly distributed across countries. Material use may outpace population


growth in high income countries, while the opposite is true for lower income countries – generating a global average that doesn’t show the full picture. Ultimately, the metabolic rate of the global economy is accelerating and material extraction and consumption are growing at almost unprecedented rates, comparable to the ‘Great Acceleration’ occurring in the period after the second world war. This is revealed by the fact that virgin


material use is not set to slow down anytime soon: without urgent action, it is expected to reach 190 billion tonnes by 2060. How can a circular economy change this picture? We measure circularity by looking at what is flowing into the economy. Today, the global economy consumes 100 billion tonnes of materials, and a portion of that consumption every year comes from secondary materials. The Circularity Metric, introduced in 2018, was the first approximation of how ‘circular’ the global economy was. From the 2023 Circularity Gap Report also came the data that rising material extraction has shrunk global circularity from 9.1% in 2018, to 8.6% in 2020, and now 7.2% in 2023. A more holistic view on the circularity of the economy was presented and debated at Sharm El-Sheikh, looking deeper into the linear consumption that makes up the ‘Circularity Gap’. This is a topic that will continue to have more relevance.


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