Year-on-year the world’s global resources are being depleted faster and faster. Last year, Earth Overshoot Day, the day on which our consumption of natural resources surpasses the Earth’s ability to regenerate them, was the earliest on record: 29th of July. While global resource consumption continues to grow, only 9% of resources are reused.
To combat this, the Dutch Government has set a goal to reduce the consumption of primary resources by 50% by 2030, and to have a circular economy by 2050. To reach these goals, the Dutch Government is targeting the largest contributor to consumption and waste: the construction sector. The construction industry uses half of all the resources in the Netherlands. On top of that, a quarter of the output goes to waste compared to only 11% from other industries.
Our client, Platform Circular Building ’23, is a consortium of experts within the construction industry that are developing a method for the standardisation of circular construction. They are developing, in tandem, a circularity measurement method and a materials passport system which will help by providing standard definitions of circularity and a system to collect information about the circularity of materials.
We are helping our client by performing a case study using their circularity measurement method and materials passports on actual building designs set for construction at the Amsterdam Science Park campus. At the moment we are performing Life Cycle Analyses on different components of these buildings to test the method on a smaller scale before attempting to calculate the circularity of the entire building design.
In the end, we would like to deliver feedback on our own use of the method and materials passport system and synthesize suggestions for their improvement based on what we found challenging and the comments of various stakeholders within the construction industry.
