Anticipating urban mining

Abstract

In recent years there has been growing interest in urban mining from various environmental and economic perspectives. Materials hidden in buildings are attractive alternatives to raw ones, while building activities are responsible for a large share of waste. The paper is a summary of findings from an analysis of possibilities for urban mining in Amsterdam, focusing on prospecting for metals in residential buildings. Both global literature and interviews with Dutch demolition experts suggest that performance in metal recovery from buildings is as high as it can get. However, estimation of metal content in buildings and of waste processing rates is far from reliable, accurate and precise enough to support such claims or identify possibilities for further improvement, especially in relation to processes of urban and real-estate redevelopment and rejuvenation. To improve understanding and embedding of urban mining in these processes, we propose (a) a BIM-based information infrastructure that connects to municipal and owner information processes, so as to progressively collect all relevant information, allow for validation, verification and localization of valuable resources, as well as identify opportune moments for their extraction, and (b) policies that overcome the fragmented institutional character of the building sector, making information sharing a consequence of networking based on trust and shared values, driven by both demand and soft incentives relating to circularity.