Re-envisioning construction as a circular economy

February 19, 2020 8:28 AM

[Reducing the impacts of buildings on the world] is not just about adding more solar panels, biomass boilers, and all the other bolt-on gadgets to tick the green assessment boxes. It requires a fundamental shift in our attitude to materials. “We have to think of buildings as material depots,” says Thomas Rau , a Dutch architect who has been working to develop a public database of materials in existing buildings and their potential for reuse. There are now over 2.5m square metres of building matter logged in his Madaster database [....] He has developed the concept of “material passports”, a digital record of the specific characteristics and value of every material in a construction project, thereby enabling the different parts to be recovered, recycled and reused. The case for ... never demolishing another building (The Guardian)
posted by filthy light thief (27 comments total)

Thanks for this! Was just looking at the World Green Building Council's 2019 report “Bringing Embodied Carbon Upfront: Coordinated action for the building and construction sector to tackle embodied carbon” (free to download if you give them your email address). I've been finding these terms useful to frame discussions with students.

- Embodied carbon Carbon emissions associated with materials and construction processes throughout the whole lifecycle of a building or infrastructure

- Upfront carbon The emissions caused in the materials production and construction phases of the lifecycle before the building or infrastructure begins to be used

- Operational carbon/Use stage embodied carbon Carbon emissions associated with materials and processes required for the upkeep of the built asset throughout its lifecycle

- End of life carbon The carbon emitted during demolition or deconstruction and processing of materials for reuse, recycling or final disposal
posted by spamandkimchi at 9:05 AM on February 19, 2020 [4 favorites]

"From the facade to the lightbulbs, each element would be rented from the manufacturer"

so greenwashing of a whole new level of rent-seeking?
posted by joeyh at 9:21 AM on February 19, 2020 [6 favorites]

But the kind of wholesale revolution that the industry needs can’t just rely on a few progressive architects willing to take on the entire process themselves. Nor can it depend on the moral conscience of a few enlightened clients. For a more circular conception of construction to take off, there must be an economic incentive. “The moral argument simply doesn’t work,” says Rau. “We have to organise our thinking along the financial axis.”

Well, you do if you only care about the needs of the financial sector. It's funny how there's very little weight given to "what if this was enforced/promoted via laws and fines," as opposed to "how do we get corporations to like it." The carrot for them seems to be "let's give you more opportunities for rent-seeking," and now I'm imagining homeowners and renters having to rent light fixtures, not just electricity. Or their landlords do and charge them accordingly, making it even harder to get broken ones fixed and opening up whole new avenues of gouging.

And of course the normal lack of mention of the fact that, in the long run, environmental regulations help everyone, including corporations, because dead people don't buy much.
posted by emjaybee at 9:51 AM on February 19, 2020 [3 favorites]

"but imagine if we monetized the rot"
posted by Reyturner at 10:01 AM on February 19, 2020

The carrot for them seems to be "let's give you more opportunities for rent-seeking"

The biggest and juiciest carrot, as mentioned in the next sentence after that Rau quote, is that "on average, the residual value of a building’s materials equates to around 18% of the original construction cost – a huge bonus to the bottom line".

Also, 'laws and fines' and 'renting' are not mutually exclusive concepts. Reducing the scope for rent-seeking is one solution to shitty rentiers; another solution is regulating the rentiers. If you don't think that's likely to happen, fine, but that's a broader issue than whether a circular construction economy and buildings-as-a-service are worthwhile goals.
posted by inire at 10:29 AM on February 19, 2020 [1 favorite]

"From the facade to the lightbulbs, each element would be rented from the manufacturer"

so greenwashing of a whole new level of rent-seeking?

“Ownership blocks innovation,” [Thomas Rau] says. “Treating building elements as a service would remove planned obsolescence and increase transparency and responsibility.” He has already convinced the company Philips to offer lighting as a service (including at Schiphol airport , where they say the new fixtures will last 75% longer and see a 50% reduction in energy consumption), while elevator companies, toilet manufacturers and facade fabricators have since followed suit.

Yeah, that's an idea I hope dies out. This sounds like more than planned obsolescence, but enforced obsolescence, with a product refresh cycle as part of the cost to "rent." Who the hell wants to "upgrade" their toilets every few years? Yes, I'm sure there's ways to innovate toilets, but how do you improve waterless urinals (How Stuff Works)? What happens to "outdated" facades?

Writing this up, I see how a lack of material turn-over means reduced push to innovate and make something new, but that means a lot of waste, or someone's getting "hand-me-down materials." I wonder how Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, or LEED (Wikipedia) would score "building as a service" projects, when it comes to considering the lifecycle cost of the building. Built it the best you can the first time.

See also: The case for ... making low-tech 'dumb' cities instead of 'smart' ones (The Guardian), "rewilding" towns to make them more resilient, and learning from historic building methods and materials.
posted by filthy light thief at 10:37 AM on February 19, 2020 [6 favorites]

I think the critical distinction is that by holding the same entity responsible for not only production and operation of the element, but also removal and [refurbishment/recycling/disposal] fundamentally reduces some large externalities. Marking your product “100% recyclable” is the easy part. Removing it after years of use and effectively recycling it is another thing altogether.
I’m not sold on systems as a service as a panacea but they can still be a huge improvement over business as usual. This is a wicked problem. It will take many ideas and lots of enthusiasm really move the needle.
posted by meinvt at 10:43 AM on February 19, 2020 [2 favorites]

Taking his example of a light/lamp, if a bond was issued for the amount of disposal, say five dollars, and this bond was paired to the lamp forever, and its value increased over time, doubling every twenty years perhaps, then even a cheap lamp would be worth the value of the bond down the road. The bond's cash value would pay for its disposal because transferring the lamp is transferring the bond too. The licensed disposal company would buy a broken lamp below the bond's cash value in order to profit. If the lamp burned in a fire, the bond would be worthless, but one would have proof of value for insurance. The same goes for theft, which could also help prove the crime.
posted by Brian B. at 10:49 AM on February 19, 2020 [2 favorites]

Personally, I think "adding more solar panels, biomass boilers, and all the other bolt-on gadgets to tick the green assessment boxes" does more than this over complicated rent seeking wankery.

That it comes from a Dutch architect should set alarm bells ringing.
posted by MartinWisse at 10:58 AM on February 19, 2020 [1 favorite]

"Take-back" laws seem less exploitable than the rent idea in general - Brian B. bonds are a detailed version, and I can think of separate ways to cheat:game those or the funded-disposal-capacity version. All of them need to charge for disposal and then enforce the charges, which the US at least is not doing well at.
posted by clew at 11:12 AM on February 19, 2020 [1 favorite]

I studied energy-efficient building reuse years ago, figuring that we'd never solve our building energy use problems through new construction. Still, it was kind of humbling to crunch the numbers and see how much energy consumption for a building over say 50 years dwarfed the embodied energy associated with construction.
posted by St. Oops at 1:30 PM on February 19, 2020

That’s the big argument for building more expensively to reduce operations cost, yeah? Hence incentives and codes. But! Will loading take back costs onto building materials squeeze out operations-efficient building? Or will making demolition less expensive speed up turnover to new buildings built with better tech and tighter standards?

(I’m using `expensive' to mean both money and environmental damage. Between them falls the shadow.)
posted by clew at 2:20 PM on February 19, 2020

Still, it was kind of humbling to crunch the numbers and see how much energy consumption for a building over say 50 years dwarfed the embodied energy associated with construction.
If I'm reading that correctly, you are saying that construction costs of a new building are less than the ongoing operating costs of an older building (due to efficiency gains, maintenance costs or whatever). If you recall any of your work or formulas or primary sources, I'd love to see it.
posted by The_Vegetables at 2:42 PM on February 19, 2020

If you’re looking over 50 years you’re already assuming a longer shelf life than we often have in America for building core and shell. We build universities, airports and civic monuments for that kind of longevity, not houses and office buildings. If we mandated 50 year lifespans for the average building the entire construction industry would have to make major changes to adapt.
posted by q*ben at 4:05 PM on February 19, 2020 [1 favorite]

Huh - casual search finds - ". At the end of 2017, the average U.S. commercial building was about 50 years old (49.83 years). This finding is in line with prior years. ", and "A housing survey conducted by the U.S. Census in 2009 found the median age of American houses to be 36 years, with 22.9 percent of homes built during the 1950s and 1960s. The median age of homes also depends heavily on the area of the country. Homes in the Northeast are older, with a median age of 51 years."

IME houses built west of the Mississippi in the 50s and 60s were mostly greenfield, not replacing older stock, so average housing age may go up now that there’s a stock of houses to get old.

I could believe that houses in the Southeast are taken out by termite and storm often enough to keep average ages low?
posted by clew at 4:21 PM on February 19, 2020

26 storey tower Chelsea Hotel in downtown Toronto is now slated to be demolished in order to put up an even taller structure. Demolishing it would create quite a bit of waste.
posted by ovvl at 6:16 PM on February 19, 2020

Well, you do if you only care about the needs of the financial sector.

Not to point out the obvious, but in a capitalist system, almost nothing is built/bought/sold if it doesn’t justify existing on a purely monetary basis.

As a construction professional, I have to confess to some.weariness when it comes to the green building fad of the moment. I say that as someone who took the time and effort to get my LEED accreditation and finds it’s a system that is great in theory but hard to justify the cost because the concrete proof of effectiveness is so elusive. Don’t think that doesn’t mean I throw up my hands. I always try to push my customers to choose products that are less toxic, easier to recycle, and more efficient to run.

It pains me to send so much stuff to the dump but, quite frankly, there is no infrastructure available for real recycling of building materials. If it’s asphalt, concrete or metal I have options but that’s it. Vinyl wall covering? Dump. Wood studs? Dump. Gypsum wallboard? Dump.

I could go on but you get the idea.

Frankly, the idea that a building can be deconstructed and the constituent materials warehoused until they can be reused strikes me as a waste of warehouse space. What we really, really need is recycling infrastructure that doesn’t simply consist of “ship it to China and let them deal with it”.
posted by Big Al 8000 at 8:16 PM on February 19, 2020 [2 favorites]

Lighting as a service strikes me as a really good idea for large-scale public buildings. Ever notice how the grocery store never has a light burned out? Back in the day of fluoresce lighting, there were businesses who would travel around the country changing every bulb in the store on an annual or biennial basis. Now, there are businesses who specialize in converting those same facilities to all LED fixtures. Guess what? Those LED fixtures are usually rated for a 50,000 hour lifespan, which is only 5.7 years in a 24-hour environment before the fixture will need to be replaced.
posted by Big Al 8000 at 8:24 PM on February 19, 2020

filthylightthief re 'enforced obsolescence', yes that'd need some serious law to stop abuse. I do like interface's carpet tile leasing scheme, but that's down to building user control.

It seems so much easier for corporations to do things at scale (windfarms, stormwater projects, 'climate solutions'...) whereas there's a raft of hassle when it comes to a wind turbine, pv array and raingarden at home - yet billions of us doing these would add massive useful redundancy and storm backup - and a lot of local jobs. The problem for the Capitalists is this is not monetisable for them at their scale. We should start by composting the Capitalists.

We looked at society and energy use in landscape planning and it had been worked out that merely orienting houses to the sun would save >10% on the city energy bill (with no other changes) - that was for ~41°South.
posted by unearthed at 10:01 PM on February 19, 2020 [1 favorite]

Sorry, I've moved on and don't remember the sources for my calculations. It would have all been in Swedish anyway. Here's an interesting and more recent study though.
posted by St. Oops at 10:02 PM on February 19, 2020 [1 favorite]

Clew,
You’re right, my comment is definitely West Coast biased. Though we do have our share of 50 year old office towers. However, many of those older buildings have substantially renovated enclosures and MEP systems. I stand by my comment that mostly only civic buildings are built for a 50 year unrenovated lifespan.
posted by q*ben at 10:12 PM on February 19, 2020

The Missing Bodies in Architecture’s Talk of Embodied Energy


And also Architects Declare a Climate Emergency But Can They Avoid Real Estate’s Greenwashing Tendencies?

Renting building components leads to higher maintenance costs and often worse response times. Mechanical systems, especially the newer high efficiency ones, typically have proprietary controls, locking you into a maintenance contract for the life of the system. Elevators are similar and only a handful of companies can handle large projects. You can buy a non-proprietary elevator control system, but it's much more expensive because you aren't tied to them for maintenance.

More companies are starting to take back their products. Armstrong will come pick up their ceiling tiles for recycling, as one example.

Still the amount discarded by construction and demolition is immense, and often unnecessary, while buildings are becoming less durable.
posted by sepviva at 6:34 AM on February 20, 2020 [1 favorite]

We build universities, airports and civic monuments for that kind of longevity, not houses and office buildings.

This is very wrong. Sure, the fastest growing cities in the US have been mostly built since 2000, but on average I'm pretty sure housing stock in the US is quickly approaching 50 years old if it has not already surpassed that. 50 years old is only 1970, so just imagine every major city in the US has housing stock much older than that. Also the biggest single-family building boom was between 1950-1980, and single family building has been falling since then.
posted by The_Vegetables at 11:54 AM on February 20, 2020

I'm not as sure about office buildings, but then again the nature of office work has dramatically changed since then 1970. It wouldn't surprise me that 30-50% of the office buildings in the US are 50 years old and older.
posted by The_Vegetables at 11:56 AM on February 20, 2020

From St Oops’ link:

A total energy use reduction of 36% can be reached in 2050 through 46% reduction in operational energy use and 35% increase in embodied energy use, compared to 2015. This research confirms that the relative importance of embodied energy use is increasing: the embodied energy use in standard homes is about 10–12% of the total energy use, while it is 36–46% in energy efficient homes.

That 35% increase in embodied energy has to be paid for upfront, of course, which is the hard part socially. Same study thinks demolition is 1% the energy use of construction.

I’d like to know - and i in think it’s sort of assumed in the study linked - whether it looks better for the future to design for long building lifespans or short ones, assuming we optimize either for total energy use.
posted by clew at 1:01 PM on February 20, 2020

Whoof, I scrambled that last paragraph. Skimming suggests to me that these studies assume building lifespans in the future will be like those of current stock, which seems unlikely to me based on history.
posted by clew at 1:05 PM on February 20, 2020

I’m going to restate my earlier point as I don’t feel like I was clear enough. Lifecycle for buildings isn’t a monolithic thing. From the sources I’ve read like this example only around half of embodied energy in construction is in structure, foundation and site work. The rest is interior finishes, MEP systems, facade and roofing systems, etc. Some of these systems are what are discussed as being delivered as a “rental” in the FPP article. Over a hundred year lifespan, while the structure itself might survive these finish and subsystems will likely be replaced multiple times, which means their aggregate environmental impact is greater than the structural fabric of the building.

These kinds of smaller systems are not designed for longevity in the commercial market. Window systems are arguably getting better but certainly not finishes or MEP, or the dozens of low voltage lighting and data systems on the market. With institutional clients the focus can be on long term ownership, with more durable finishes and higher quality mechanical solutions. But I don’t see the status quo changing in the commercial market any time soon without fundamental intervention.
posted by q*ben at 1:54 PM on February 20, 2020 [2 favorites]