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The most popular materials for reuse and donor buildings

Material passports are coming to the fore through their practical application in the built environment, as their use contributes to the promotion of circularity, the mitigation of the effects of climate change and the reduction of waste, it is emphasized in a report by Eris Driva on economix.gr. These are, in essence, “passports” that accompany building materials and products, including basic information that serves to recover and reuse them when they complete their life cycle.
The need to change the way of thinking and working brings to the fore the circular economy which must now be part of the equation in construction as well. As the British Green Building Council points out, “we need to re-evaluate the way we think about and approach the building cycle, looking at everything from initial design to end-of-life design”. And this seems to be starting to catch on in London where detailing the products and materials used in projects so they can have a second life after demolition has been discussed but never implemented on a major construction project. Now, however, it is changing. It is noted that, according to the British Building Magazine, construction generates 68 million tonnes of demolition waste per year, 30% of all UK waste. While 92% of this waste is recovered, most of it is recycled into lower value products. Thus, reusing rather than processing materials could significantly reduce the industry’s carbon dioxide emissions.
After trying to make buildings more energy efficient, the industry is now focusing on reducing embodied carbon, and reusing materials from demolished buildings is the new frontline for reducing carbon in construction. Those manufacturers who are on the cutting edge are already reusing materials in projects to reduce their carbon footprint – which also works as a good marketing tool.
The most popular materials for reuse and donor buildings
Popular materials for reuse are structural steel and raised access floors. In fact, the demand for these floors is so great that they are unofficially as expensive as a new system. This is because supply chains for reused materials are limited and floor panels must be cleaned and tested before resale.
Reusing structural steel offers significant carbon reduction and determining its properties is relatively easy through measurement and testing. Contractors like to know the buildings – “donors” as the new project can be custom designed to fit the size of the steel sections of the old building. The limited supply of steel sections on the open market means that it is difficult to source correctly sized sections to fit into already designed buildings.
For example, Great Portland Estates is developing London’s largest steel reuse project, as it calls it, at 30 Duke Street in St James’. It is an eight-storey office building with ground floor retail south of Piccadilly. It is estimated that almost 79% of its structure will be reclaimed, with 67% coming from the donor building, City Place House, a 40-year-old, 10-storey building near the Guildhall in the City, while the rest will be met by steel recovery specialists. Limestone, granite, marble and wood railings will also be reclaimed.
The market for reclaimed materials could receive a huge boost if provenance – including the manufacturer, age, properties and standards to which they were manufactured – could be easily determined. And the answer to how this can be done is material passports. Information about the building elements is recorded during design and construction and stored in a database so that it can be recalled when the building is demolished, making it much easier to reuse the elements.
The EU already mandates digital product passports for items such as electric car batteries from 2026 to facilitate their reuse for stationary applications such as home energy storage and – when the battery wears out – for recycling. One of the barriers to the introduction of passports is the lack of a standardized framework for the type of information recorded and stored during design and manufacture, so that consistent and relevant product data is available to those who reuse these materials. A framework would define the hierarchy of this information, from the location of the building to the properties of individual materials.
Application of material passport in London
Waterman Group and sustainability specialist Anastasia Stella developed the framework, while material passports are being applied to the development plan for the 12-storey Edenica office building, at 100 Fetter Lane, which is aiming to achieve a BREEAM Outstanding rating. The construction company is YardNine, while the project is financed by BauMont Real Estate Capital. The main contractor of the project is Mace. Anastasia Stella left the company to develop the software platform needed to record building data and data for later recall. “When we started, we saw that there was a lack of standardization about what data we capture, how we capture it, and who is responsible for it,” she explains. “So we developed the Waterman Materials Passport Framework to standardize the process. We then developed Circuland, which is a digital platform that brings the technology aspect into context. The framework provides the theory and the platform brings the automation and practical application,” he explains according to Building Magazine.

Five categories were selected for testing the passport materials: column and core, steel frame, precast facades, raised access floor and precast floor slabs. These categories correspond to 80% of the building, they also do not need regular maintenance and are unlikely to degrade during the life of the building, making them easier to reuse.
The team avoided building services due to the complexity and maintenance regimes, as most components are replaced during the life of the building. And providing warranties on mechanical parts that wear out is more difficult than static pieces of steel. The building is designed to be dismantled – there are permanent lifting hooks on the back of the prefabricated cladding panels and the steelwork is bolted rather than welded.
Composite steel and concrete floor slabs were avoided, as they are impossible to reuse, and prefabricated slabs were chosen instead. QR codes were affixed to the back of the components to identify them when the building is dismantled. The materials and product information provided by the experts were uploaded to the Circuland platform, which then creates a building passport and material passports for the individual elements. The building passport is derived from the component passports and includes general information such as the location of the building, the percentage of recycled content, what can be dismantled and the total carbon footprint.
What information is contained in passports
Component passports provide a wealth of information including manufacturer, geometry, standards to which the component is manufactured, fire safety and CPD information, data sheets, maintenance requirements and carbon footprint. They can also include how to disassemble it to help in future demolition. Concrete produced on site is difficult to reuse, but data is still recorded, including its quality and whether it included cement replacements and steel reinforcement details.
The platform hosts a 3D model of the building derived from the design and construction BIM data. Individual items can be selected by clicking on them in the model, which displays the passport information. This avoids the need to identify the part from the QR code, which may be missing or damaged. Information about components in the building can also be easily transferred to the facilities management team responsible for maintaining the building. A maintenance history would facilitate the reuse of some products.

“Dismantling” instead of demolition

Therefore, the new way of looking at buildings is as material banks filled with reusable elements for future constructions. Deconstructing buildings instead of demolishing them – carefully dismantling them and salvaging their materials for reuse – can reuse much of what would otherwise be waste.
This strategy has been adopted in several countries, according to The Conversation. Since 2015, the French government has launched various laws and incentives that favor deconstruction. The Netherlands has a national program aiming to reduce the use of primary raw materials in the construction industry by 50% by 2030. Vancouver in Canada aims to reduce construction and demolition waste and encourage the reuse of demolition materials. The City of Oakland, California has established a deconstruction requirement that ensures salvageable materials are identified and removed for reuse instead of being recycled or sent to landfills. The problem, as Dutch architect Thomas Rau puts it, is that waste is a material without an identity. The categorization of materials is essential for their rescue and recognition of their reuse possibilities.

Existing buildings are treasures
Imagine if every material in a building had an identity: a material passport consisting of a physical tag linked to a database. For example, a glass pane could have a product passport consisting of different material passports related to the materials used to make it (sand, soda ash and limestone).
Attributing identity to existing materials helps designers understand their physical, social and environmental value and realize their potential. In essence, these passports prevent materials from becoming a mass of waste, extending their lifespan and preventing their disposal.
Old buildings are more than just remnants of the past, they are treasures waiting to be saved. Creating passports for building materials, before they are dismantled, allows them to be identified, located and retained for use instead of being discarded.
Buildings and materials have not only one life, but the potential for many.