Gillott, C. orcid.org/0000-0001-5706-7909, Mihkelson, W. orcid.org/0000-0003-3414-6561, Lanau, M. orcid.org/0000-0001-6315-2608 et al. (2 more authors) (2023) Developing regenerate: a circular economy engagement tool for the assessment of new and existing buildings. Journal of Industrial Ecology, 27 (2). pp. 423-435. ISSN 1088-1980
Abstract
The transition toward a circular economy (CE) is key in decarbonizing the built environment. Despite this, knowledge of—and engagement with—CE philosophies remains limited within the construction industry. Discussion with practitioners reveals this to be contributed to by a lack of clarity regarding CE principles, with numerous organizations recommending implementation of differing and sometimes conflicting principles. In addition, a systematic assessment of how building designs consider CE is made difficult by the multiple design areas required to be considered and the large amount of design data required to do so. The absence of a systematic CE assessment causes a lack of comparability across designs, preventing benchmarking of CE practices in building design at present. This paper details the development of Regenerate, a CE engagement tool for the assessment of new and existing buildings, established in an effort to overcome the aforementioned barriers to the adoption of CE within the construction sector. A CE design workflow for the built environment is proposed, comprising four overarching circularity principles (Design for Adaptability; Design for Deconstructability; Circular Material Selection; Resource Efficiency) and contributing design actions. In addition to engaging stakeholders by enabling the assessment of building designs, the tool retrieves key data for further research. Information on completed design actions as well as recycling and waste metrics is collected to facilitate future CE benchmarking. “Bill of materials” data (i.e., material quantities) is also compiled, with this being key in material stock modeling research and embodied carbon benchmarking.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2023 The Authors. Journal of Industrial Ecology published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of International Society for Industrial Ecology. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY), which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). |
Keywords: | circular economy; built environment; construction; design tool; adaptability; reuse |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Sheffield |
Academic Units: | The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Engineering (Sheffield) > Department of Civil and Structural Engineering (Sheffield) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Sheffield |
Date Deposited: | 12 Jan 2023 15:16 |
Last Modified: | 26 Sep 2024 14:27 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Wiley |
Refereed: | Yes |
Identification Number: | 10.1111/jiec.13377 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:195126 |