A multi-disciplinary construction sector round table which will enable product manufacturers, trade bodies and specifiers and consultants to share knowledge and challenges around growing the use of circular economy in UK construction projects. This means both reusing products but also developing greater recycled content. Many manufacturers have long been reducing waste in their processes, reusing and recycling materials, but how can specification of truly ‘circular’ solutions be achieved across construction, and what are the impacts and benefits for specifiers, clients and manufacturers?
Other potential questions this session will look at:
- What can be recycled, who is making the major steps in UK manufacturing and specification, and how can it be rolled out to the mainstream? But also in the reuse stream, who ‘owns’ products once they are installed in a building, and how can they be reused at end of life, both in terms of management and their physicality? What about in existing buildings where circular approaches were not originally planned in?
- What and who are driving it – especially in the mainstream sector – architects/housebuilders/clients? How are material passports helping grow the practice of specifying circular economy alternatives? LCAs – too ad hoc, client by client, what other drivers are needed eg Part Z, other embodied carbon mandates?
- What are the cost impacts and who benefits from the ROI? Ultimately it means selling much less ‘new’ product so how can this be offset? The Construction Products Association points out challenges of finding long-term solutions in a complex industry when investment costs “fall on one supply chain but the benefits are gained by another part, especially where there are several intermediaries.” How can supply chains be shortened and simplified, and what are examples which mainstream/SME construction can adopt?
- How much is bio-based, and how can carbon impacts be objectively measured? What is the scope for full circular economy principles in mainstream UK construction? Is there a danger of greenwash if it’s only a ‘partial circle’? What are the limits to the circle? i.e. how far can we go?
- What are the performance and insurance implications of using higher levels of recycled content? How are manufacturers responding to these challenges?
- Logistics of reuse – how manufacturers are working closely with clients on reuse/recovering material?
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