44 | Sector Focus: Panel Products
◄ 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 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% 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 and more relevance. However, Arup commented that there are many core conditions that need to be in place globally for a truly circular system in the built environment, and some are key to achieve the net zero transition. One of them is to increase the supply of and access to “circular materials”, defined as “pre-used, low or/zero- carbon and carbon negative, recyclable, or recycled”, on a global scale. And even in this category, “re-using and recovering materials should always be the priority, in order to minimise waste and overall demand for new material”.
THE EU TAXONOMY We are now seeing a rapidly changing context for companies’ operations, and for investors with changing legislation and policies to combat and mitigate negative climate change: The EU Taxonomy, in effect since July, 2020, is a classification system establishing a list of environmentally sustainable economic activities.
It could play an important role and help the EU scale up sustainable investment and implement the European green deal. The EU Taxonomy will provide companies, investors, and policymakers with appropriate definitions for which economic activities can be considered environmentally sustainable. In this way, it should create security for investors, protect private investors from greenwashing, help companies to become more climate-friendly, mitigate market
fragmentation and help shift investments where they are most needed. The “Transition to a circular economy” is one of the six environmental objectives. Additionally in 2022, the World Green Building Council, (WorldGBC) convened leaders from across the value chain to formulate a detailed plan for how EU policymakers and the built environment sector can work together to fully decarbonise buildings and construction by 2050. In the project #BuildingLife, 10 European Green Building Councils are convening to deliver the European Green Deal. Both the UK and Spain are in the group spearheading this project, where “Waste and circularity” and “Sustainable finance” are two of four areas.
BARCELONA AND BEYOND As was reported previously (TTJ November/ December 2021) and with these dynamics in mind, HONEXT continues to develop into an extremely interesting proposition. In Barcelona, after more than 10 years research at UPC Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (
https://www.upc.edu/en) HONEXT emerged as a spin out company bringing with it a revolutionary fibre waste reclaiming process that turns cellulose residue from the pulp and paper industry into a fully recyclable, construction-ready material, manufactured and designed for additional processing, for most applications. By analysing sorting and classifying waste, based on its composition it has proved possible to achieve new standard FR products. Depending on its quality, HONEXT uses 0%-100% for both sludge and old corrugated cardboard (OCC) as well as the use of other industrial fibres as the raw material base. “We needed to close the loop on the cellulose life cycle and start seeing this type of fibre waste for what it really is: an untapped resource,” said Pere Merino, HONEXT chairman and co-founder. As a result of many lab trials and experiments over these years and by an innovative approach to develop these techniques, HONEXT has now used the technology breakthroughs to combine waste raw material, using cellulose premium sludge and OCC and particular enzymes into a fibrolised cellulose based panel. This new construction material for interior use is certified as ‘circular by design’.
Above: HONEXT boards used as partition walls at Expormim’s stand at Salone del Mobile in Milan PHOTO: EXPORMIM
TTJ | May/June 2023 |
www.ttjonline.com
Not only is the management team behind HONEXT demonstrating how innovation and biotech can offer new, truly sustainable solutions for the built environment, but the business model is also being developed to be a modular solution, and thereby quickly scalable, to be established where the waste from the pulp and paper industry is produced. This fulfils another crucial principle of the circular economy, highly relevant for the built environment; that material re-use should be
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