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The built environment sector largely exists to serve our universal need for shelter, and as such is one of the most important consumers of raw materials in the world.

We believe the built environment should be a ‘living’ system in which building materials and products are optimally used and reused— a system that operates within the boundaries of our planet, preserves the (business) value of its resources, and ensures the well-being of its inhabitants.

Tremendous opportunities to reverse the tide and prevent a state of lock-in from happening exist for regions where the built environment sector has yet to mature. There is also still hope for those regions where the fate of the construction sector may seem set in stone.

This is why two key strategies stand out: 

- Preventing lock-in through thoughtful design
- Optimising (material value) through transformative re-design

Built environment

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This collection features a selection of case studies, mainly based on the [2024 Circularity Gap Report](https://www.circularity-gap.world/2024). 

In this year’s Report, we shift from exploring the what to the how: exploring the different ways that we need to ‘change the rules of the game’ and create a set of conditions that discourage the overshoot of planetary boundaries and ‘undershoot’ of human development. This process has resulted in us spotlighting 12 of the original 16 solutions, highlighting the country profile that they are most relevant to, as well as placing people at the centre of this story for the first time. Based on extensive interviews and desk research, this Report aims to show governments and industry leaders that if they want to turn theory into action and scale an economy that delivers on needs within the safe limits of the planet, they need to dismantle harmful entrenched processes and align enabling elements. 

[Circle Economy](https://www.circle-economy.com/) is a global impact organisation with an international team of passionate experts based in Amsterdam. We empower industries, cities, and nations with practical and scalable solutions to put the circular economy into action. Our vision is an economic system that ensures the planet and all people can thrive. To avoid climate breakdown, our goal is to double global circularity by 2032. 

Through the *Circularity Gap Reporting Initiative*, our mission is to deliver an annual global Circularity Metric that measures the state of the world economy and identifies key levers to transition to global circularity. 

To learn more about these interventions to accelerate the circular transition, read the [latest Circularity Gap Report 2024](https://www.circularity-gap.world/2024), as well as previous editions of the global [Circularity Gap Reports](https://www.circularity-gap.world/global).

Global Circularity Gap Report 2024

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Business case

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

Ecological Impact

Impacts on the social fabric of the community and well-being of the individuals and families.

Social Impact

Impact on increased knowledge and understanding as a result of the case study

Increase Awareness

Reduced green house gas emissions released into the biosphere

Reduce Emissions (SDG13)

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

Reduce Material Consumption (SDG12)

Minimise waste through diversion: Instead of sending waste to landfill, it is redirected into other industrial processes for handling, treatment, recycling, recovery, or reuse in various forms. 

Minimise waste through design: At the outset of a process of project, plan and design such that there is zero waste or minimal waste during production, use, and at end of life. 

Minimise Waste (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

Ensure renewable, reusable, non-toxic resources are utilised as materials and energy in an efficient way

Prioritise regenerative resources

Utilise bio-based, reusable, non-toxic and non-critical materials

Regenerative materials

Using materials that can be easily reused or recycled after use

Reusable, recyclable materials and inputs

Make collected and sorted recyclables available for use by citizens, small businesses up to large scale industrial processes. 

Use recyclables

Other

These countries are home to around a quarter of the global population, yet consume over one-third (34%) of raw materials. Shift countries’ material footprint per capita is 4.6 times that of Build countries (largely due to the overconsumption of consumer goods imported from Grow counties) and 1.6 times that of Grow countries.

These are high-income countries in the Global North, as well as in the Gulf, Australia, and Oceania. Examples include:
- Member States of the EU
- the US
- Japan
- the UK
- Canada
- Argentina, ...

While much of their infrastructure is already built, they still contribute heavily to the overshoot of planetary boundaries: they contribute 42% of climate change, 27% of nitrogen, 18% of phosphorus, 16% of freshwater use and 38% of land use change.

To find out what country profile your country belongs to, explore [this interactive story](https://circularity-gap.world) and search for your country on the final map.  


Shift

The built environment, including housing, commercial buildings, and the necessary infrastructure for mobility, is essential for our livelihoods, but:
- the extraction of minerals used to produce construction materials is responsible for a quarter of global land use change,
- approximately 40% of global GHG emissions can be attributed to buildings’ construction, use and demolition, and
- construction and demolition processes drive nearly one-third of all material consumption. 

Making the built environment more circular must prioritise a heavy reduction in material use—while also closing the loop on materials and bringing secondary and renewable material choices to the fore. Our four key solutions for the built environment are:
- Make the most of what already exists: Make the most of existing materials by reusing, repurposing, upgrading and renovating following circular approaches. Where new builds are needed, use secondary materials and be as efficient as possible with urban planning solutions that follow circular design principles so that buildings can be reused, repurposed, and easily disassembled in the future.
- Be as energy efficient as possible: From the design phase, utilise circular strategies to create material- and energy efficient buildings. Couple these designs with a rollout of clean energy solutions, and prioritise energy-efficient appliances and retrofitting. 
- Utilise secondary materials: Maximise the high-value reuse of buildings and components where possible. Ideally, enable the utilisation of construction and demolition outputs and ensure that as much of it as possible is recycled to avoid the need for virgin materials, such as sand and gravel.
- Prioritise circular materials and approaches: Transition to using renewable wood, timber or cross-laminated timber instead of steel and concrete, or move to other locally available materials. Utilise mainstream modular construction and prioritise lightweight frames and structures to reduce cement and steel use, as well as green roofs where possible.



🏢 Built Environment

The built environment, including housing, commercial buildings, and the necessary infrastructure for mobility, is essential for our livelihoods, but:
- the extraction of minerals used to produce construction materials is responsible for a quarter of global land use change,
- approximately 40% of global GHG emissions can be attributed to buildings’ construction, use and demolition, and
- construction and demolition processes drive nearly one-third of all material consumption. 

Making the built environment more circular must prioritise a heavy reduction in material use—while also closing the loop on materials and bringing secondary and renewable material choices to the fore. Our four key solutions for the built environment are:
- Make the most of what already exists: Make the most of existing materials by reusing, repurposing, upgrading and renovating following circular approaches. Where new builds are needed, use secondary materials and be as efficient as possible with urban planning solutions that follow circular design principles so that buildings can be reused, repurposed, and easily disassembled in the future.
- Be as energy efficient as possible: From the design phase, utilise circular strategies to create material- and energy efficient buildings. Couple these designs with a rollout of clean energy solutions, and prioritise energy-efficient appliances and retrofitting. 
- Utilise secondary materials: Maximise the high-value reuse of buildings and components where possible. Ideally, enable the utilisation of construction and demolition outputs and ensure that as much of it as possible is recycled to avoid the need for virgin materials, such as sand and gravel.
- Prioritise circular materials and approaches: Transition to using renewable wood, timber or cross-laminated timber instead of steel and concrete, or move to other locally available materials. Utilise mainstream modular construction and prioritise lightweight frames and structures to reduce cement and steel use, as well as green roofs where possible.


🏢 Built environment

Based on extensive interviews and desk research, this Report aims to show governments and industry leaders that if they want to turn theory into action and scale an economy that delivers on needs within the safe limits of the planet, they need to dismantle harmful entrenched processes and align enabling elements - policy, finance, and people

- Get the economics right: Adjust fiscal policies and practices to create true prices and ensure that circular solutions are funded so that they can replace linear norms.





Finance

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

Urban Opportunities

                                      Explanation of the Residual Value Calculator                Prof. Mark Huijbregts, Professor Integrated Environmental Assessment at Radboud University, will join TNO parttime as a Principal Scientist as of 1 April. He will combine this new role at TNO with his position as professor at the Radboud Institute for Biological and Environmental Sciences, which he holds since 2010.              We are accelerating the transition to a circular economy. We do this through impact analysis, value creation and connection to circular hubs. Find out more.             Public authorities want to reduce their ecological footprint. With our research, we support policymaking for a circular economy. Find out more.                  

  Worldwide the construction industry produced 11% of the total CO2 emissions in 2017. This percentage only represents the emissions associated with building materials and construction. In the Netherlands, the contribution of the building sector to the total emission of CO2 is 35%. These numbers highlight the building industry’s large impact on the environment. To reduce this impact, the building industry should become circular; this will result in less CO2 emissions, less waste, and less primary material use. As a first step, a financial incentive can encourage this transition. To this end, TNO developed a residual value calculator. Residual value is the real value of a product at the end of its lifetime and it can be the financial incentive stakeholders need to take responsibility for their products. The residual value calculator works efficiently on a small scale, but on a large scale, it does not. The stakeholders and TNO feel the need for a method that can estimate the residual value of products on a large scale, and give insight into the relationship between characteristics of products and residual value. This project aims to develop a method that can quickly estimate residual value in a way that can be applied on a large scale, and that also gives insight into the product characteristics that influence residual value. The method that will be developed will first be based on case studies performed by TNO with the residual value calculator, before being extended to other products in the construction industry. The main goal is that this method can be used to change strategies and policies to stimulate the transition to a circular economy. The hope is that this tool will be used by designers and architects to build the cities of the future. A future that has nature at its heart, instead of humanity dominating the natural.
 


Netherlands

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C2C ExpoLAB specialises in the practical application of Cradle to Cradle principles in the built environment and (governmental) policy.

We assist both clients (such as governmental and educational institutions) and contractors (including architects and builders) alike. We gladly provide expert advice on policy-making, procurement and (re)construction projects, and firmly embed the basic C2C principles within your project. This enables you to earn and simultaneously save money by exploiting the circular economy concept in a highly innovative way.

C2C Expolab

TNO, the Netherlands Organisation for applied scientific research, was founded by law in 1932 to enable business and government to apply knowledge. As an organisation regulated by public law, we are independent: not part of any government, university or company. Please read more about our organisation below. 

A calculation model that provides insight into the financial residual value of a construction product. With the advantage that the owner prefers to recycle it circularly for a high-quality application, rather than processing it into low-value raw material. That is the Residual Value Calculator that TNO is developing together with partner C2C ExpoLAB.

TNO Insight - A calculation model that stimulates reuse of construction materials

Article / Report

Solidify definitions and create frameworks to support the understanding of the circular economy across contexts and maintain cohesive systems of data sharing, processing and storing.


 Knowledge Management

 Develop research, structure knowledge, encourage innovation networks and disseminate findings with integrity


Strengthen and advance knowledge

Volume 69, 2018, Pages 769-774Download full text in PDF

Utrecht

Copenhagen

Gemeente Delft

CIRP is the world leading organization in production engineering research and is at the forefront of design, optimization, control and management of processes, machines and systems.

CIRP

The researchers of this article developed a framework to support R&amp;D in the assessment of innovations on three levels of implementation (project, production chain and society) and on three levels of detail (quick scan, brief assessment and thorough assessment). On the project level, capacity building is analysed; on the production chain level, ‘circular’ performance is measured; on the societal level, the sustainability of the product is evaluated. The framework is being applied to wood products for the construction sector.

IMPACT: a tool for R&D management of circular economy innovations

Utilise waste streams as a source of secondary resources and recover waste for reuse and recycling

Use waste as a resource

Account for the systems perspective during the design process, to use the right materials, to design for appropriate lifetime and to design for extended future use

Design for the future

Skilling and re-skilling of the workforce through the integration of circularity into education and training programmes and support from government to enable access to these programmes for everyone.

Upskilling the workforce

If managed well, the transition to the circular economy will have multiple benefits for the labour market, including the opening up of job opportunities, raising job standards and reducing inequalities through a global redistribution of value. But a positive transition to circularity for work and workers must be underpinned by three pillars: upskilling the workforce, quality of work and inclusive job opportunities. Find out more and explore cases that illustrate these pillars below.

Circular Jobs Initiative Pillars

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A positive transition to circularity for work and workers must be underpinned by three core pillars.

  

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OUR MISSION IS TO ACCELERATE THE PRACTICAL AND SCALABLE IMPLEMENTATION OF THE CIRCULAR ECONOMY

At Circle Economy, we believe in a visionary future for our planet — one in which we do not have to compromise in order to achieve economic, social, and environmental prosperity. As an impact organisation, we connect and empower a global community to create the conditions for systemic transformation. With nature as our mentor, we work alongside businesses, cities and governments to identify opportunities to make the transition to the circular economy, and provide a powerful combination of practical and scalable solutions to turn these opportunities into reality.
‍
Our mission is to empower a global community of businesses, cities and governments to accelerate the transition to the circular economy through practical and scalable insights and solutions that address humanity’s greatest challenges.

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Circle Economy

Leiden-Delft-Erasmus Centre for Sustainability

The Hague strives towards a circular economy. The circular economy has important aspects that promote economy and employment, whilst reducing carbon emissions as well as the dependence on raw materials. This is achieved through integrating new ways of producing, consuming and creating waste. This can be achieved through a just transition to a circular economy that integrates processes around the 8Rs

Circulair Den Haag

This report lists the opportunities and obstacles for the next steps towards a
more circular economy in the Netherlands and outlines action perspective for
the government, especially in terms of how to speed up these steps. The
(economic) opportunities are quantified as much as possible, addressing
effects on employment and environmental pressure.

