Circular economy digital market solutions for reuse in the European construction sector

Abstract

Focusing on the cross-matching supply and demand for reused building components and related services, the paper analyses existing Digital Reuse Market Solutions (DRMS) in the European construction sector. A collection of 746 DRMS is built from major online circular economy platforms and custom online search queries. A taxonomy of 9 categories and 28 types is then extracted based on the activities of collected DRMS. Nearly half (46%) of collected DRMS are proper dealers of reused building components. Traditional building component dealers and demolition companies account for another third (32.8%). The rest is made of marketplaces, craftmanship, and providers of related services and knowledge. Only 13.4% of all collected DRMS allow online payment for goods or services.

Six Business Model Types for Circular Building Component Reuse Actors

“…Many of these BMs include several notable features that expand upon issues previously discussed in the literature. These features include the consolidation of post-industrial, post-consumer and new component streams; the economic value proposition (or lack thereof) of reuse models; the asset intensiveness of the models; the models' diverse revenue streams and the organizations' relationship to the government [7,8,[19][20][21][22][23][24][25].…”

“…Although much of the literature on component reuse emphasizes post-consumer components (those removed from existing buildings) [7,8,[19][20][21][22][23], pre-consumer products from the manufacturing sector offer a viable alternative to new components as well. 4) with the number of stages of the reuse supply chain each organization is involved in (Table 5) [8].…”

“…Although much of the literature on component reuse emphasizes post-consumer components (those removed from existing buildings) [7,8,[19][20][21][22][23], pre-consumer products from the manufacturing sector offer a viable alternative to new components as well. Ombygg's sale of mechanical companies' rejected systems alongside its other salvaged components demonstrates an instance of another type of material stream integration.…”

“…Some recent works have attempted to list and categorize CBMs for existing digital component reuse platforms but did not extend its analysis to the business models of the platforms, focusing instead on the impact of digitalization on each business. Sivers et al [23] classified digital component reuse platforms into nine categories based on an analysis of 746 "solutions" and investigated their online presence. The grey literature includes an analysis of existing salvaged construction product brokerages, but this review is limited to digital trading platforms [24].…”