Despite the various challenges involved, it is still a fair question to ask why circular economy and reuse is not taking off more quickly in the construction industry. Even if the environmental benefits around circularity aren’t a strong enough driver for some organisations, the social benefits are recognised and, in many examples, the economic benefits can be monitored and measured too…
… so with this in mind when we were thinking about the themes for this year’s Reuse Summit, we kept coming back to reframing. Should we be reframing how we bring circular economy into the conversation to gain wider adoption – perhaps talking about the risk of not moving to circular solutions and the resilience that is built by doing so? And reframing how we get our message across in terms of the implementation of circular practices, encouraging people to ask how and not why?
It was with this ‘reframing’ ethos that we curated the different sessions at the Reuse Summit, bringing in a wider range of disciplines including an investor, a multidisciplinary consultancy with programme and cost management at its core, and an insurance expert.
We were honoured to have Will Arnold – Head of Climate Action at the IStructE , lead author of Part Z and all-round sustainability trailblazer – setting the scene for this year’s Reuse Summit. Will talked about the Good, the Bad and the Necessary, leading with the Bad to frame the context of the situation we are all working in. He cited the shift in political thinking around net zero, the decrease in corporate buy-in around ESG, and the demolition of the M&S on Oxford Street and the Stirling Prize winning Centenary Building.
Moving on to the Good, examples included solar energy getting cheaper, there are more great building project examples showing the art of the possible around retrofit and reuse and that we have some excellent reference material to support our work such as the Reuse Atlas. Will also mentioned legislation and guidance such as the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive recast which includes requirements around whole life carbon assessments and limits and the Net Zero Carbon Building Standard, an increasing number of UK councils including circular economy guidance in their planning requirements and even progress in the US despite Trump.
And lastly the Necessary. Will believes that a legal obligation to reuse buildings will come. To support that we need to review the system as it is today and focus on what needs to change, such as stopping overdesign and making retrofit and reuse the first port of call. Sticking with business as usual is often the easier choice, industry needs encouragement through green/ longer term finance, carbon literacy programmes and clear direction through procurement processes. The International Court of Justice has recently issued an ‘advisory opinion’ stating that inaction regarding climate is complicity – we have a legal obligation to act on climate change. Silence does not make you a neutral party, if we don’t talk about the alternatives, about better solutions, are we then not also part of the problem?
The rest of Session 1 comprised a fly through of the Reuse Now work that the ASBP team have been involved in over the last year such as the Reuse of Glass Partitioning Systems deep dive, the reuse of timber and concrete webinars and the third in the ‘From Demolition to Deconstruction’ event series. We will also soon be launching a training course for the reuse of steel.
ASBP Technical Director Dr Katherine Adams gave a quick ‘RAG rating’ for reuse activities in the last 12 months, mentioning areas where little progress has been made, aspects that are moving forward but need improvement and positive advancements respectively. The list included a red flag for designing for reuse and standardisation/ protocols; an amber for improvements in manufacturer take back schemes, metrics & data, and some types of product reuse; and a green for the increase in pre-demolition audits, better links back to embodied carbon, increased awareness in the industry and some great exemplar case studies.
Amy Peace from UKRI gave a brief overview of their work related to circular economy, mentioning past projects and a current programme called ESBEM: Emergent Sustainable Built Environment Materials which has been set up to accelerate the adoption of UK low-environmental impact, emergent, construction products & materials – ASBP are a member. More circular economy related programmes and funding opportunities are in the pipeline.
Session 2: Risk & Resilience – Moving Circular Economy out of the sustainability silo
The common thread through Session 2 was that circularity is increasingly being seen as a strategic pathway rather than just ‘part of the environmental agenda’.
Salvatore Gangemi and Ivo Kolchev (McLaren) opened the panel, demonstrating Mclaren’s commitment by driving the adoption of circular strategies through the realignment of teams internally and showing project case studies where they are implementing reuse, creating urban mines to maximise reclamation and reuse, and the multiple benefits that creates. Mark Rogers (Turner & Townsend talked about the tracking of both carbon reduction and retained value through reuse. Following on with some insightful investor perspectives, Kathryn Barber (Orchard Street) spoke of investors not being ‘one size fits all’, each needing to consider their investment objective, risk profile and time horizon when deciding on an approach; and that to encourage buy-in industry needs to position circularity as a risk reduction and resilience strategy to support and strengthen investment objectives, not be seen as something that could detract from them.
Key takeaways included:
- Circular economy practices are not just about embodied carbon – reuse supports planning approvals, enables local sourcing, and helps to avoid material delays.
- Supply chain collaboration is crucial to a successful circular economy, from design to procurement to facilities management and on to deconstruction and reclamation.
- How much the market undervalues retrofit
- The need for more ‘brown to green’* transition funds targeting longer term investment.
(*Providing the opportunity to offer finance to companies, which are ‘brown’ today but have the ambition to transition to green in future, including firms that are not able to issue green bonds today, due to a lack of sufficiently green projects. Transition bonds are intended to provide financing for these ‘brown moving to green’ companies, which in fact is the stage the majority of businesses are in.) - Circularity is starting to be viewed as an asset management tool rather than just ‘part of the environmental agenda’.
- The knowledge and capacity to bring circular solutions into projects is limited outside of London
Session 3: Addressing the Perceived & Actual Risks of Structural Reuse
This session brought together an overview of a key part of the reuse agenda that the ASBP has been championing for some time, the challenges and opportunities of the reuse of structural materials.
The presenters used some interesting and informative case studies, both old and new. From Paul Lockwood (Cleveland Steel & Tubes) talking about steel reuse at the Olympic stadium and industrial warehousing; to Andrea Charlson (The Concrete Centre) highlighting where concrete frames/buildings were reused such as Elizabeth II Court and 160 Old Street, and more recently where concrete sections of buildings are being reused such as at Euston Tower, Knightbridge Green and Brunswick Centre Hub; and Phil O’Leary (Wood Knowledge Wales) citing where timber has been reused for centuries from reclaimed ship timbers into mill buildings of old and also in more recent projects where, for example, groynes have been incorporated into the new Durley Chine Environmental Hub project in Bournemouth.
We now have a proven process for the reuse of steel, but whilst timber has been reclaimed and reused for a long time, the regrading and certification process can be more complex, not least due to timber being a natural product and therefore not uniform. Regrading timber is as much an art as science and we are at risk of losing the skills to do it as people get older and retire or move out of the sector. Provenance is particularly important for timber, knowing both the tree species and area of origin is critical due to its material properties and the associated impact on reuse potential.
The reuse of concrete has moved on from reuse of the building or demolished concrete elements being downcycled and crushed for aggregate. A combination of innovation and passion to maximise the use of existing materials has resulted in some exciting research pilots and also real-life projects testing and demonstrating the art of the possible including reusing slabs from monolithic floors. Reusing ex-situ is much more challenging than in-situ, particularly as the material is not necessarily being used in the way that they were designed to be reused which requires additional fire and loading tests. Decide as early as possible what the material will be used for so that appropriate testing can be done in a timely way rather than testing being a hurdle that stops reuse happening due to potential time delay.
Our fourth speaker (Roger Flaxman, Lignum) on this panel gave an excellent presentation about insurance, a frequently cited barrier to reuse. Although it may be thought that insurance is not the most exciting topic, Roger bought such a sense of animation and enthusiasm to his insightful session that it was one of the most well received of the afternoon. Yes, the insurance industry presents many challenges for component and material reuse, but the presentation brilliantly highlighted the solution: working together, collaborating, and cooperating to find creative ways to insure these products.
The insurance industry runs on data, decisions are increasingly made from algorithms. To be able to offer insurance to the reuse sector, organisations operating within it need to create communities of practice to offer the scale the insurance industry requires, sharing loss and risk across the community, agreeing on standards and quality controls, and giving more control over specifics and requirements to make insurance more affordable and available.
For insurers, the major issue in addition to provenance is that reused products often lack clear liability routes, unlike new materials. This makes cost recovery challenging. The industry is relatively comfortable with reusing structural steel, but less so with some other products. There needs to be clear processes, structured auditing and scale (including communities of practice), and a move to differentiate away from the waste management sector which is seen as high risk.
Session 4: People & Behaviours – how to create the best chance of success for reclamation and reuse
The closing panel focused on behaviour change and – in addition to how we use the tools we have available – how important positioning and language is to educate, inform, persuade and motivate clients and teams.
Sophie Thomas (Useful Simple) reminded us of the huge volumes of waste the systems we use every day produce. We rarely design for future resilience, we need to rethink our systems and design briefs with reuse in mind to design out waste and design in sustainability to deliver regenerative solutions. Circularity needs to be built in by the client from the beginning.
Ben Holmes (Elliot Wood) talked about behaviour change theory – capability (do we have the knowledge & skills); opportunity (does our environment enable the behaviour eg data & info); and motivation (do we have sufficient drive to act – we need professional and commercial drivers). Ben spoke of the real gap now often being not, in fact, skills or knowledge – but lack of data. For reuse to scale we need more historic information, the more material information that can be plugged into pre-demolition audits and pre-redevelopment audits the more useful they can be. Elliot Wood uses tools such as Matterport scanning to enable information gathering and sharing and has created a building archives system to support this. They have found using 3D building models to discuss the potential of reuse and areas to target at an early stage creates an element of gamification to animate and motivate teams.
Amy Peace (UKRI) gave some interesting perspectives around the use of language, to perhaps focus less on sustainability or circularity and just go straight to the ‘what is it you want me to do’? Life cycle thinking is paramount, Amy suggests using graphics and illustrations to highlight the direction of travel rather than go too much into statistics and details, at least initially. Our design teams should be better empowered to do the right thing.
Challenges remain – from data and insurance to warranties and policy gaps – but the solutions are emerging through collaboration, storytelling, and shared evidence. And I’ll leave the last words to Ben Holmes (Elliot Wood), from his LinkedIn post following the event:
“Reflecting on an inspiring day at the ASBP Reuse Summit. Huge thanks to the ASBP team for organising such a thought-provoking event. Days like this remind me why this work matters. The knowledge exists, the solutions are emerging, and the momentum is building.”
Article authored by Debbie Ward, Reuse & Circular Economy Director, The Alliance for Sustainable Building Products