Management system for building materials as a basis for closed loop material flow analysis considering material efficiency and climate change mitigation

Abstract

Resource management is becoming increasingly important in the construction sector. In order to support the recycling of materials, it is necessary to determine the quantities in the building stock and those caused by construction activities. At present, a large number of different actors use different categories for construction materials and the raw materials they consist of as well as for waste categories, depending on their field of activity. This results in imprecisions that make it difficult to consistently track and influence mass flows and hinder targeted resource management. This is the starting point of this paper as it discusses possibilities to establish a consistent allocation of materials to context-typical groups following the approach of continuous material flow analysis. On the input-side, aspects of mineral planning and on the output-side aspects of waste and secondary raw material management are being considered and references to grey emissions are established along the entire process chain. In this way, cross-departmental planning relating to recycling management and climate protection will be supported. With regard to the object of consideration and the level of action, a distinction is made between two different spatial scale levels: on the one hand, the individual building level, where the material inventory approach is used to provide detailed information on the building’s material composition, and on the other hand the regional level, for which more aggregated information on building material groups is provided in the form of material cadastres. Current results of a research project in Germany are presented.

Resource‐saving in buildings through material substitution: A preliminary study of structural dependencies

“…However, we have no details of the relative quantities of raw materials used in the investigated products. Indeed, only a handful of studies have attempted to estimate the raw material composition of end products: for example, Reference 49 describes a methodology for this, and detailed data can be found in Reference 50. In this current study, however, we are not aiming at this level of detail, since the resulting weights of the end products are the sole factor impacting the dimensioning of the structure.…”