SusTec and ESD researchers discuss a circular building industry in a podium and a short movie
Together with representatives from a material producer and an engineering company, Christof Knoeri (SusTec) and Maja Wipraechtiger (ESD) elaborated at the CISBAT conference on how circular concrete and insulation materials currently are handled and where different material loops could be closed.
At the Download CISBAT conference the state of circular economy activities in the building sector were discussed. While concrete recycling is increasingly recognised and considered by the industry, insulation materials are much harder to recycle. Specifically their combination with other materials such as glue, aluminium, or plastic makes recovery particularly hard. In addition, insulation production lines are tuned to very specific input materials and can currently not incorporate recycled materials with unknown compositions. Nevertheless, the considerable amount of environmental impacts in terms of embodied emissions as well as the high volumes of currently and in the future installed materials, make insulation a particularly interesting field to test different circular economy concepts.
Watch the short movie Download here.