Circular Economy in the Built Environment

In the second instalment of our Environmental Blog series, Charlie Law covers the opportunities and barriers for a Circular Economy in the Built Environment. Charlie was one of the original contributors to the Environmental Manual and founder of Sustainable Construction Solutions, a Circular Economy and Responsible sourcing consultancy.

What is the Circular Economy and why it is so important to the construction sector?

The Circular Economy goes beyond the current take-make-waste industrial model to create business models that design out waste, keeping products and materials in use.

The Built Environment sector is responsible for some of the largest material flows across the globe. The UK Green Business Council estimates that UK construction, demolition and excavation accounts for 60% of both materials use and waste generation. With the cost of building materials continuing to increase, coupled with increasing costs to manage and dispose of waste, the transition to a Circular Economy creates a significant commercial opportunity.

TTWhat does Circular Construction look like?

To achieve circularity to consider these areas:

Service Life Optimisation

This includes a longer life for some components i.e. building skin, floor finishes etc which can change with trends.

Designing for Maintenance

To ensure items that require maintenance are easily accessible.

Resource Efficiency

Create efficiencies but not at the expense of a longer product life.

Designing for flexibility, deconstruction and disassembly

By allowing for parts of the building to be removed and remodelled during the building’s life with consideration for full deconstruction and disassembly at the end of life for both building and individual components.

Where possible ensure use of raw materials from renewable sources and get the best possible utilisation from the materials. For example, ensuring that timber components are remanufactured into other products before allowing this to move outside of “the circle”.

Finally, look at how products are managed over their lifetime by ensuring suitable business models to maintain and bring the products and components back into the loop at the end of their service life through leasing and service contracts, for example.

Good examples of the Circular Economy 

More and more manufactures are adopting a circular approach. Currently these tend to be focused on shorter life products such as carpet tiles, office furniture and ceiling tiles. Desso, Interface and Shaw all have take back schemes in place for carpet tiles. Herman Miller are designing office furniture to allow for better maintenance and remanufacture. Phillips are beginning to provide service contracts for lighting.

However, they are still in the main focused on linear business models where the items are sold into the marketplace and then not tracked through their life. There is real opportunity in looking at solutions for longer life products such as steel, M&E, cladding etc.

Barriers to the uptake of the Circular Economy Principles 

There tends to be a lack of understanding on how the new business models could be adopted for construction. There is still a desire to own all the materials in a building. All commissioning clients need to own is the space the building provides, everything else should be owned by the manufacturer through a lease or service contract.

The new business model solutions are not readily available in the market currently which is significantly reducing the adoption of a circular economy. There needs to be a shift in the way buildings are procured with manufacturers taking a prominent role in the supply chain.

Where can companies get support on adopting Circular Economy principles?

The Supply Chain Sustainability School has some free e-learning resource online: https://www.supplychainschool.co.uk/uk/sustainability/construction/support/e-learning-modules.aspx and also runs workshops on implementing the circular economy. Partners of the school can host a workshop for their supply chain to attend free of charge.

Companies in Scotland can access help through zero waste Scotland: https://www.zerowastescotland.org.uk/content/circular-economy-opportunities-construction-sector-2017