The construction industry in Europe stands at a critical juncture, facing a unique combination of challenges and opportunities that shape its future. As one of the largest and most impactful sectors, construction plays a central role in developing the cities and infrastructure of tomorrow. 

However, its environmental impact is significant: the built environment, driven by construction activities and building use, is responsible for 40% of global CO2 emissions and 40% of global resource use. This makes it a major contributor to the transgression of several planetary boundaries, including Climate Change, Land-System Change, and Biosphere Integrity. 

This case study selection highlights circular practices in the reviewed projects based on the 9R circularity framework, which serves as a set of guiding principles for transforming conventional construction practices into more circular and sustainable ones.

Built Environment: the 9R Strategies

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Policy case

Impact on the availability of resources as well as their effect on living organisms, ecosystems, and components of the environment.

Ecological Impact

Reduced use of virgin materials and/or an increase of the use of secondary and bio-based materials

Reduce Material Consumption (SDG12)

Producing building materials and providing services to create residential and non-residential infrastructure and real estate


Construction and Infrastructure

Producing building materials and finished and semi-finished building products for construction

Construction Materials and Products

While resources are in-use, maintain, repair and upgrade them to maximise their lifetime and give them a second life through take back strategies when applicable

Stretch the lifetime

Give products and parts another life after their end-of-use

Maximise lifetime of products after use

Extraction and reuse of parts from end-of-life products for use in new products

Part recovery

**Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable**

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The pandemic has caused major shifts in migration patterns, including huge movements of people in and out of urban areas. Furthermore, climate change and conflicts tend to have disproportionate impacts on cities. These factors mean that the world is far from achieving the goal of sustainable cities.  
In many developing countries, slum populations have been growing, putting at risk the target of adequate housing for all by 2030. Since 2015, the number of countries with national disaster risk reduction strategies has more than doubled. 

Cities are hubs for ideas, commerce, culture, science, productivity, and social, human and economic development. Urban planning, transport systems, water, sanitation, waste management, disaster risk reduction, access to information, education and capacity-building are all relevant issues to sustainable urban development.

This target entails multiple essential concepts such as disaster risk reduction (DRR) and sustainable transport.

To achieve SDG 11, efforts must focus on strengthening capacities for planning for urban development, improving access to public transportation, and enhancing waste management. 

Sources: [https://sdgs.un.org/goals/goal11](https://sdgs.un.org/goals/goal11)
[https://sdgs.un.org/topics/sustainable-cities-and-human-settlements](https://sdgs.un.org/topics/sustainable-cities-and-human-settlements)


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11. Sustainable cities and communities

Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable

Slow strategies aim to keep materials in use for as long as possible, for example through design for durability and repairability. A more circular economy is also a slower one: materials, components, and products—and even buildings and infrastructure—that we lock in stocks are made to last. This will lower material demand in the long run, in essence also serving to narrow resource flows.

Slow

The strategies can include:
- smart manufacturing
- designing for disassembly
- material passports for the building products, etc. 

🏢 Smarter creation and use of products 

The strategies eliminate the waste in the design stage itself.

 The strategies maximise their lifetime and give them a second life (e.g., take back strategies) when applicable.

🏢 Extending the lifespan of products and parts

Maintain, repair and upgrade resources while they are in-use.

Intensifying product use (e.g. via product sharing or multifunctional products).



🏢 Rethink

Replace typical brick and mortar wall with a dry-stacked wall with interlocking bricks will limit the amount of mortar required and ease the deconstruction efforts at the end of service life for the subsequent use.

More efficient use and/or manufacture of products through the use of fewer natural resources and materials.

🏢 Reduce

Reuse of discarded yet still usable product, for the same purpose, by a different user.

🏢 Reuse

The doors, windows, service installations, and even furniture are flexible compared to the building structure. If dismantled carefully, they can be reused elsewhere for the same or different purposes.

Impacts

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Industries

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The principles of a circular economy concern designing out waste, regenerating ecosystems and keeping items in use. Decoupling the economy from material flows—improving the rate of resource productivity faster than the economic growth rate—is also a consistent guide. By evolving with the growing number of applications of circular economy principles, and consolidating these strategies across thematic areas, Circle Economy’s Key Elements Framework (KE) renders the elements of the circular economy salient and serves as a basis to derive contextual strategies and interventions. 


The Framework consists of:
- Core Elements: Activities directly handling product or material flows; and uniquely,
- Enabling Elements: those that remove obstacles for core actors.


Key elements of the circular economy

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Circle Economy's framework of strategies and activities that define the circular economy

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**These 17 Goals recognize that ending poverty and other deprivations must go hand-in-hand with strategies that improve health and education, reduce inequality, and spur economic growth – all while tackling climate change and working to preserve our oceans and forests.**

The SDGs build on decades of work by countries and the UN, and especially on the Millennium Declaration adopted in September 2000 at UN Headquarters in New York which let to the elaboration of eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) to reduce extreme poverty by 2015.

In 2015, the Paris Agreement was signed. A major blueprint came out of this: The Sustainable Development Goals: 17 overarching goals—and 169 targets—that governments are aiming to meet by 2030. Significant progress has been made in terms of poverty, health and inequality, but there's still a way to go. This is where the circular economy comes in: by circulating resources multiple times, the circular economy tackles issues of scarcity and allows all to access what they need—without overburdening the earth. If it's implemented in a holistic way—affording attention to social considerations and the fair distribution of resources— it also offers a pathway for achieving the SDGs; and the link between the two is ever-growing. To read more about the link between the SDGs and the circular economy, click [here](https://www.circle-economy.com/blogs/how-the-circular-economy-can-help-us-reach-the-sustainable-development-goals).

It is the Division for Sustainable Development Goals (DSDG) in the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UNDESA) which provides substantive support and capacity-building for the SDGs and their related thematic issues. TheDSDG plays a key role in the evaluation of UN systemwide implementation of the 2030 Agenda and in advocacy and outreach activities relating to the SDGs. In order to make the 2030 Agenda a reality, broad ownership of the SDGs must translate into a strong commitment by all stakeholders to implement the global goals. DSDG aims to help facilitate this engagement.
Alongside this, the annual High-level Political Forum on Sustainable Development serves as the central UN platform for the follow-up and review of the SDGs.
In addition, the UN Secretary-General presents an annual SDG Progress report, which is developed in cooperation with the UN System, and based on the global indicator framework and data produced by national statistical systems and information collected at the regional level.

To read more information: [https://sdgs.un.org/goals](https://sdgs.un.org/goals)

Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

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Based on the work of [Bocken et al. (2016)](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/309699661_Product_design_and_business_model_strategies_for_a_circular_economy), the Four Flows Framework serves as a simple framework for managing resource flows in a circular economy by using less (Narrow), using for longer (Slow), using again (Cycle), and using clean, regenerative materials and energy (Regenerate).

These different principles of circular economy can be applied to our socioeconomic metabolism: we can design stocks like buildings, infrastructure, machinery, and vehicles to be rich resource mines for the future, and design manufactured goods and consumables to be cycled and made regenerative. Furthermore, the focus must also centre on getting more value out of fewer materials. Achieving the aims of a circular economy—minimising material use, regenerating the Earth, and preventing material losses—can be done through these four key strategies mentioned above.

Source: Circle Economy. (2023). *[The circularity gap report 2023](https://www.circularity-gap.world/2023)* (p.22). Amsterdam: Circle Economy. 

Four Flows Framework

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This framework surpasses the famous 3R (Reduce, Reuse, Recycle). The nine strategies Refuse, Rethink, Reduce, Reuse, Repair, Refurbish, Remanufacture, Repurpose, and Recycle and Recover provide a clear and actionable roadmap for a circular transition. 

Strategies at the top of the hierarchy, such as Refuse, Rethink, and Reduce, are the most effective at increasing a construction project's circularity level. These strategies focus on avoiding or minimising resource use and waste from the project's conception.

That is why a clear hierarchy exists where higher-level R strategies are preferred, and lower-level strategies are deemed more linear. 

In the original 9R framework, the last strategy, Recover, is often considered non-circular since it consists of energy recovery from material waste incineration, which is why it was left out of the scope of this case study collection.

They are applied to the built environment sector here as part of the [Realdania ](https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=https://www.realdania.org/&ved=2ahUKEwiF74KezMyJAxUpUaQEHURhOOEQFnoECBYQAQ&usg=AOvVaw0o-XWvSka80KCHtCG6XDS3) project.

🏢 9R Framework

  Ga naar hoofdinhoud        Als het aan de Gemeente Rotterdam ligt, bestaat afval in de toekomst niet meer. Dan is afval een grondstof. We werken toe naar een circulaire economie. Dat betekent: minder spullen kopen, spullen maken die langer meegaan en minder spullen wegdoen. En alles wat je wegdoet, wordt hergebruikt.Milieupark + De HER is hét grondstoffencentrum van Rotterdam, waar hergebruik, onderwijs, creativiteit en ondernemerschap centraal staan. Hier kunnen Rotterdammers vanaf begin 2025 hun gebruikte materialen en spullen weggeven op het milieupark en zien hoe ondernemers in De HER deze grondstoffen verwerken tot waardevolle nieuwe producten. Niet alleen het gebouw zelf, maar ook de inrichting is grotendeels circulair. De HER is een unieke plek met nu al een bijzondere geschiedenis. Of je nu ondernemer, student of inwoner bent: bij Milieupark + De HER bouwen we samen aan een duurzame toekomst voor onze stad.  
       1 van 7 - Beeld: Jan van der Meijde    2 van 7 - Beeld: N3O Architecten    3 van 7 - Beeld: N3O Architecten    4 van 7 - Beeld: N3O Architecten    5 van 7 - Beeld: N3O Architecten    6 van 7 - Beeld: N3O Architecten    7 van 7 - Beeld: N3O Architecten    
     De gemeente brengt circulariteit op allerlei manieren naar de Rotterdammer. Bijvoorbeeld door het bouwen van een nieuw milieupark met circulair centrum aan de noordrand van Rotterdam. Rotterdammers kunnen hier hun afgedankte spullen en materialen inleveren bij het milieupark. Of ze geven ze weg op het doorgeefplein wat grenst aan circulair centrum De HER. De HER is een plek waar je kunt zien, leren en ervaren wat circulariteit is. De gemeente wil circulair bewustzijn en gedrag van de Rotterdammers stimuleren. We laten zien hoe je je spullen langer kunt gebruiken. Maar ook dat van ‘ons’ afval dat in de milieuparken terechtkomt, nieuwe spullen gemaakt kunnen worden. Want als we onze spullen langer gebruiken en nieuwe spullen maken van de oude, is dat beter voor het milieu. En voor ons!In De HER kunnen circulaire makers zich ontwikkelen. Circulaire ondernemers kunnen zich er vestigen. Er is veel aandacht voor educatie. Schoolklassen zijn welkom voor een excursie. Scholieren en studenten vinden er circulaire leer-/werktrajecten, stageopdrachten en onderzoeksplekken. Er komen werkplaatsen waar met de grondstoffen van Rotterdammers andere mooie spullen gemaakt worden. En er is ruimte voor een hapje en een drankje.Voor meer informatie kun je contact opnemen met Team De HER via De-HER@rotterdam.nl.   
           De gemeente bouwt Milieupark + De HER zoveel mogelijk circulair, dus van gebruikte materialen. Het gebouw van De HER was jarenlang een laboratorium in Delft. Dat pand is helemaal uit elkaar gehaald en verhuisd naar Rotterdam. Op de Bovendijk krijgt het na de opbouw een nieuwe functie; die van circulair centrum.Het mooie is dat de materialen hun waarde behouden. We hebben dus geen energie en nieuwe grondstoffen nodig. We doen het met wat we al hebben. Dit beperkt de CO2-uitstoot en voorkomt verdere uitputting van de aarde. De eerste stap in circulair bouwen is om te kijken welke materialen er al zijn en hoe deze weer opnieuw gebruikt kunnen worden. Met het donorgebouw uit Delft kregen we een grote hoeveelheid hergebruikt materiaal. Alle informatie van de onderdelen staat in een materialenpaspoort. Na verwerking in het nieuwe gebouw wordt het materialenpaspoort bijgewerkt. Zo kunnen we ook in de toekomst het gebouw weer demonteren en ergens anders opnieuw op bouwen. Een eindeloze cyclus dus.        De bouw van het nieuwe milieupark en De HER wordt gerealiseerd met de volgende partners: BAM Bouw en Techniek, N3O architecten, Ingenieursbureau BOOT, BBN Adviseurs, Adviesbureau DGMR, GKB, Raadgevende Ingenieurs IMD, Roelofs, Sweco, Vic Obdam, Yuverta, Retro Bridge, BAM Advies & Engineering, Adex Groep, Prince Cladding Obdam BV, Peinemann, Murre – De Visser, Van Delft Groep, BAM Modulair, Verwol, Orange Climate, Van der Padt Deuren BV, Werkse! en De Bende.                Ben jij een duurzame ondernemer met ervaring, of wil jij je als startende circulaire maker verder ontwikkelen? Waar je ook staat: bij De HER is plek voor iedereen die mee wil bouwen aan een circulair Rotterdam. Beeld: Jan van der Meijde   Lees Meer          
  

Rotterdam

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Municipality of Rotterdam

Royal BAM Group nv is a construction firm with operating companies in five European markets (the Netherlands, Belgium, the United Kingdom, Ireland and Germany). BAM’s operating companies are active in the business lines Construction and Property, Civil engineering, as well as in Public-private partnerships.

DGMR

N3O Architects

IMd Consulting Engineers

Vic Obdam Steel

<p>De HER is a pioneering circular environmental park in Rotterdam designed to promote awareness, education, and entrepreneurship in circular practices. By 2025, it will be constructed using materials salvaged from a dismantled laboratory in Delft, De HER demonstrates the feasibility of reusing entire buildings or new construction.</p>