Reducing Construction Waste

The ethos of a circular economy is to “make things last”, eliminating waste.

The built environment is a key player when it comes to moving away from the linear model of “make, use dispose” to a sustainable and circular model.

Current building infrastructure wasn’t designed with the circular economy in mind and was rarely constructed so that at the end of life they can be dismantled and re-used.  A circular approach to construction is all about building with the future in mind.

Fundamental to the success of the circular economy in Scotland is how modern buildings and modern materials can be designed to be better used, last longer and be able to be used for other purposes at the end of their life cycle.

Circular construction starts with designing out waste so that:

• materials specified and used (natural or technical) can have a future purpose beyond the life of the building;
• buildings can be easily adapted for different future uses without generating waste;
• building can be easily maintained and repaired without generating waste;
• buildings can be easily deconstructed easily so materials can be reused.

• Using Building Information Modelling (BIM) as a technique to design, plan and manage construction projects as it allows 3D models of the clients’ vision to be created;
• Whole life costing is an approach which can be helpful at the design stage as it allows the whole life cost of a new build or refurbishment project to be measured and the impact of different design choices can be tested;
• Sharing/Leasing/Hiring – allow flexibility within the design to acquire unconventional items if necessary and to allow for the potential for material exchange. There are also some businesses now leasing construction materials such as steel frames;
• Servicing and repair – extending the lifetime of buildings by maintaining and repairing them, so they remain in their original use for as long as possible. Did you know that the lifetime cost of a building can exceed initial capital layout five times over?
• Remanufacture and re-use – extending the lifetime of buildings at the end of their ‘first life’ by repurposing them or enabling other, subsequent uses. E.g. transforming a commercial building into disparate domestic dwellings. This is also about prioritising the sourcing of re-used materials. The increasing use of materials passports to document all the components of a building helps in encouraging re-use and recycling;
• Recycling – separating products into component parts and materials, and enabling those to be reutilised in new products, displacing the use of virgin raw materials. At the design stage, it’s about design specifying the use of recycled materials wherever possible.