“Recycling is what happens when reuse was not planned early enough”.
The Alliance for Sustainable Building Products held three ‘From demolition to deconstruction’ events across 2024 and 2025 as part of the Reuse Now campaign. The objectives of the events were:
- to bring together a cross section of the construction industry to share best practice and discuss how clients, design teams and contractors could better work together to support deconstruction
- for the different disciplines to understand the risks, challenges and opportunities for other parts of the supply chain of moving from demolition to deconstruction
- to ensure demolition contractor skills and experience are being fully utilised across the design and the demolition phases to successfully flip the model where the majority of buildings that have to be taken down are being deconstructed rather than demolished, and new buildings are being designed for effective deconstruction
Across all discussions, tables and cities, similar themes were repeated, showing sector consensus on the challenges and opportunities of shifting away from traditional deconstruction and towards deconstruction to align with a circular economy ethos.
Interspersed with presentations to share best practice and guided by a series of questions during each event, groups discussed a variety of topics around deconstruction, reclamation and reuse, what works, where efforts have failed and why.
This paper summarises the findings, including quotes and direct observations from some of those attending, and will be used as the basis for a follow-up, action-oriented, round table event to be held in Q2 of 2026.
Main diagnosis as to what isn’t working:
Reuse fails not because of technical difficulty, but because of:
- Timing (reuse strategies and demolition teams mostly brought in too late)
- Procurement (rarely is there a contractual mechanism for reuse)
- Information (not enough reliable pre-demolition data and/or material passports)
- Limited capacity for the right skills (demolition vs deconstruction skill gap)
- Liability / warranties / regulations – currently equal risk, but could be an opportunity
- Programme pressure
- No aggregated marketplace / materials flow interface / limited storage
- ‘Recovery’ catch all – limited/unclear KPIs to enable separation of reuse from recycling
- Limited incentive structure (financial, carbon, planning, tax)
- Designers creating building designs without knowledge of what is available to reuse
- Clients wanting reuse but not understanding what it requires
Top Recommendations
- Make Pre-Demolition / Pre-Refurbishment Audits Mandatory and Standardised
Not just “an audit” — a usable, quantified material inventory with carbon values and reuse potential. Reframing the value – materials need to be seen as potential revenue stream rather than waste.
- Have a nationally recognised standard format
- Required for planning
- Required in tender packs
- Becomes the basis of design decisions
- Encourage Clients to have a material inventory as part of their asset management process, then the audit should only just be to confirm what is there and the condition it’s in – FM plays a big role in information as well as maintenance management.
Several tables commented that this should become as normal as a topographic survey.
- Bring demolition contractors into RIBA Stage 1–2 as paid consultants (PCSA model)
Closer relationship with architects. Demo contractors are currently:
- First on site and last in the design process
They need to be:
- First in the design conversation
Mechanisms suggested repeatedly across discussions:
- Pre-Construction Services Agreement/ Early Contract Involvement for demolition
- Direct appointment by client, not via main contractor
- Demo input into design for deconstruction
- Separate KPIs for Reuse and Recycling
BREEAM 99% recycling is actively hiding poor reuse. Need KPIs for:
- % materials reused
- Carbon saved through reuse
- Value retained
- Proof of reuse chain (not just diverted from landfill)
- Create a Second-Hand Materials Market / Storage/ ‘Facilitator’ Role
A huge repeated blocker: “Who owns the materials between projects?”
Industry needs:
- Regional hubs / triage spaces/ stockholders/ facilitators/
- Material marketplaces (with an aggregator)
- Have someone responsible for custody, certification, resale
This is a missing market function, not a technical problem.
- Embed Reuse into Procurement and Contracts
Currently: “No JCT contract for reuse exists”
Industry needs:
- Reuse intent written into Employer’s Requirements
- Reuse targets priced at tender
- Consequences/clauses if not achieved
- Waste costs still allowed if reuse fails
- Flow chart in tender with reuse at the top
- Reform the RIBA Plan of Work / Industry Process
Many references to:
- RIBA stages not supporting reuse
- Personnel changes killing early ambitions
- Need for reuse to survive from Stage 0 to 6
- Part of this is also have a ‘reuse champion’
- Combine the Golden Thread with a ‘Green Thread’ – ensuring decisions made early on are adhered to throughout the project concerning circular choices as well as choices base on safety/ wellbeing
Suggestion:
A formal reuse checkpoint at each RIBA stage.
- Manufacturers Must Be Brought In (Extended Producer Responsibility)
Repeated frustration with:
- Products that cannot be reused or recycled (GRC, composites, carbon fibre, etc.)
- Lack of take-back schemes
Industry needs:
- Design for deinstallation
- More take-back schemes
- More EPDs for reused products
- Product data sheets explaining reuse pathway (have some examples but needs review and shared more extensively as a resource – DRIDS/FCRBE, also ASBP recent work on Glass Partitioning Systems and currently working on Doors)
- Skills Gap: “Deconstruction” is not “Demolition”
In the last few decades people on the machines have been trained for speed and H&S, not recovery.
Industry needs:
- Upskilling
- “Reuse crew”
- Recognition that demolition is a technical profession
- Education, CPDs, apprenticeships
- Clients Must Be Educated that Reuse generally equates to additional time and (small) cost uplift
Consensus as following, which Clients need to know at brief stage.
- 10–12 weeks extra programme
- 5–10% cost uplift acceptable to many clients
- 100% uplift only when badly planned
- Design Should Sometimes Be Led by Available Materials
This is a subtle but powerful insight repeated in multiple conversations:
“Does design need to be led by available materials rather than materials led by design?”
Kit-of-parts, standard steel sections, flexible aesthetics, materials with a story don’t need ‘shiny and new’, where possible specify within a range not precisely.
Quick Wins (materials everyone agrees can work)
These came up repeatedly
- Raised access floors
- Ceiling tiles
- Carpet tiles/ flooring
- Partitions
- Steel sections (standard lengths)
- Bricks
- Timber
- Temporary works
- Furniture / fit-out
- Lighting
- Aggregates
And those that are difficult:
- Glass (particularly re contamination)
- MEP
- Composite materials
- Modern bricks with cement mortar
- Glass Fibre reinforced concrete
- Carbon fibre
- Mineral fibre ceilings
- Visqueen Polyethylene Damp Proof Course
Also to note:
What will be the ‘asbestos’ of the future?
What will be the impossible to reuse products? E.g. graphene/ Concretene
The Three Most Important Actions
Across all notes, the sector would prioritise:
- Mandatory, standardised pre-demo audits with carbon + reuse value
- Early paid involvement of demolition contractors in design stages
- A market (aggregated) / storage (improved) / certification system – for second-hand materials
What This Really Shows
The sector knows exactly what to do, the industry has the knowledge and teams are willing to do it. What’s missing/ not in place at scale is:
- Process
- Policy
- Procurement routes
- Market infrastructure
Other points to note:
- Whilst reuse is the top of the ‘R Ladder’, not every product or material can be reused, it should not be black and white ‘reuse or downcycle/incinerate. There are often many options across repurposing and closed loop recycling which retain value in materials.
- Current pricing/financial models are such that many demolition contractors may struggle to see the benefit of reuse vs recycling – need to better understand key viable reuse materials and establish viable economic markets for these. What levers can be used, including carbon benefits for ‘reclaimers’ as well as ‘reusers’?
- Better knowledge of where products and materials can go to, take back schemes, distributors and retailers, salvage yards, reuse hubs… the space is continually evolving, the industry needs to share this information to maximise supply and demand/ material flows.
- Employer’ Requirements/ contract – fine line with reuse targets, needs to be mentioned to drive reuse into and throughout the project but a standard target probably not feasible because it’s different project to project – what is actually achievable – if too prescriptive it may turn contractors away from jobs. Also need more audit to ensure materials slated for reuse off site are actually reused.
- What is the best lever to encourage more deconstruction, reclamation and reuse? Procurement, better infrastructure, green leases, tax & legislation, more awareness raising, improved skills, metrics, standards & data, tougher carbon requirements, changes in policy eg delaps, business rates, landfill, incineration… Practices such as dilapidation contracts and stripping out to reduce business rates don’t support reuse.
- Sharing knowledge: more inter discipline/industry workshops and knowledge share – building relationships early on.
- Sharing risk: between industry, proportionate to the reward
- Sharing gains: Carbon and social value gain – for clients/designers; where do demo contractors get the extra benefits?
Quotes from participants
Howard Button, Demolition Recycling and Re-Use Consultant and past IDE President
“The ASBP ‘From Demolition to Deconstruction’ roundtable events have been a great platform for open and frank discussion on the expectations and deliverables facing the Demolition industry as we enter this challenging era. The Demolition sector is open to the challenges and opportunities that circular economy practices bring, reflecting post war days when the reuse of materials was the only option open to obtaining construction materials.”
Tom Seath, John F Hunt
“Attending the Alliance for Sustainable Building Products (ASBP) Demolition to Deconstruction Round Tables provided valuable insight into how early design decisions and supply chain collaboration can significantly increase material reuse on future projects. For John F Hunt, embedding these circular economy principles at pre-construction stage presents a clear opportunity to reduce embodied carbon, retain material value, and drive more sustainable delivery across our demolition and construction activities.”
David Hughes, Blackstone Stripout
“The ASBP From Demolition to Deconstruction event discussions captured the reality on the ground – reuse succeeds when it is planned early and fails when it is treated as an afterthought. As strip-out contractors, we see first-hand that the biggest barriers are commercial, procedural and demand not technical.”
Roy Fishwick, Cleveland Steel & Tubes
From my point of view I found the ASBP From Demolition to Deconstruction events to be informative and open. It was easy for people to have their say and this really helped get more perspectives on the issues, especially from people who live among the muck and the rubble rather than in the niche of sustainability professionals. I think it is crucial with all initiatives like this to ensure the people doing the practical stuff are involved and listened to as well as just trying to ‘educate’ them.”