Concrete Compass: Circular economy
Navigating to useful resources and guidance
There is a growing recognition among governments, businesses and the public that we need to transform our take-make-dispose economy into a more circular one, in which resources are kept in use for as long as possible while maximum value is extracted.
This compass seeks to direct to the current and evolving resources and guidance and cases studies provided by The Concrete Centre to help designers and specifiers make informed decisions regarding concrete and to encourage practices that supports a more circular economy.
General Guidance
A separate webpage is available to provide an overview of circular economy and concrete along with strategies that designers can adopt to maximise a concrete structure’s potential in a circular economy
Further guidance is provided in this on-demand webinar: Circular economy: strategies for concrete buildings, which includes examples of existing and evolving best practice.
An article ‘Circular economy: strategies for concrete buildings’ is also available in Concrete Quarterly magazine, autumn 2021.
The Concrete Centre publication Material Efficiency provides design guidance for doing more with less using concrete and masonry.
The Concrete Futures magazine article ‘ This is not the end’ explores examples of projects designed to be adaptable, retained for long life, and designed for disassembly and reuse.
UK Concrete Circular Economy Framework
The Circular Economy is one of the four areas of focus of the refreshed UK Concrete Industry Sustainable Construction Strategy Framework published in 2024. The focus for UK Concrete is to continually develop these priorities for the concrete sector and its associated supply chain, as well as collaborating with stakeholders to evolve the understanding of concrete’s role in supporting a circular economy across its whole life cycle.
Articles, guidance and case studies related to the key circular economy strategies of reduce, reuse and recycling are gathered below.
Improving resource efficiency
Concrete offers a range of opportunities to achieve reduce the amount of resources needed for construction, both within the structure and beyond. Significant improvements in the material efficiency of the frame can be achieved through reducing design loads, reducing spans and selecting the most efficient structural system for the design criteria. Key guidance and links to resources to assist with efficiency of structural design is available via the Concrete Compass: Material Efficiency and a dedicated web page on dematerialisation.
Focus on lean design
As well as reducing material use in the structure, concrete and masonry offers opportunity to make further material savings throughout a building by adopting a lean approach to design. Concrete can often meet acoustic and fire performance requirements without reliance on additional materials.
Exposing the concrete avoids the waste and resource use associated with installing ceilings, wall and floor finishes, but also of their replacement and maintenance over the life of the building.
Utilising the thermal mass of the exposed concrete can also reduce, or avoid, the need for mechanical cooling and its repair and replacement. More information is provided in this bitesize webinar.
Focus on: Waste reduction
The UK concrete industry is a net user of waste, consuming 881 times more waste than it sends to landfill according to 2022 data. In 2020 the industry sourced 36.2% of its energy from materials diverted from the waste stream and the aim is to increase this even further. More information on the concrete industry's actions on reducing waste can be sourced from the annual reports Concrete Industry Sustainability Performance Report.
Focus on: Wastage rates for concrete products
A recent study on wastage rates provides guidance on current wastage rates associated with common forms of concrete construction. Read more.
Reuse
The inherent low maintenance and durable nature of a concrete structure, together with its resilience to fire and the impacts of climate change, mean that it can remain in use over a long period, with the potential to be repurposed and reused multiple times during its lifetime.
More information about the reuse of concrete can be found here.
A collection of reused, repurposed, expanded and reinvented case study exemplars can be found in ‘CQ Focus: Reuse’.
Summary guidance for engineers for assessing the potential for reuse of a concrete structure can be found in the Concrete Quarterly technical article ‘Reusing structures: One step closer to a circular economy’ It is available to read in the 2022 CQ technical compendium.
The Concrete Quarterly, spring 2024 article ‘Reusing Concrete Elements’ provides examples of extracting and repurposing concrete components.
Focus on disassembly and reuse
Many concrete products such as panels, posts and paving are regularly reused in their original form. Recent articles and events featuring notable examples of concrete structures designed to be disassembled for reuse, or reusing disassembled concrete include:
- Circle House: Denmark’s first circular, social housing project.
- De & Re-constructable modular concrete structures – online webinar recording
- Webinar presentation on concrete designed for disassembly and reuse in car park construction – view here
- The upper tiers of the London Olympic stadium featured in CQ Autumn 2012
- Space House – using refurbished, repositioned precast cladding. Also featured in this Sustainability Series webinar.
Recycled concrete
Concrete is fully recyclable and the supply chain for processing for use in construction is well established. More detailed information on the ways in which concrete is and can be recycled are available here.
It is common practice to include some recycled or secondary material content in the manufacture of concrete, including its cementitious binder, aggregate and reinforcement. Guidance on use of recycled material, waste and secondary materials in the manufacture of concrete and cement is available here.
Focus on: Making better use of recycled concrete demolition waste
A 2023 joint event between Cambridge University and The Concrete Centre, brought together a broad community of representatives from industry to explore the opportunities, challenges and potential for alternative uses of concrete demolition waste. It included presentations on some of the new uses in development, their potential production and separation processes, as well as examples of live projects in progress.
Recordings of each session are available here:
The written record of the proceedings can be downloaded here. A summary article of the event is available to download here.
Further articles about some of the innovations featured at the event include:
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