INDUSTRY CONTEXT

CONSTRUCTION

INDUSTRY CONTEXT

With a workforce of more than 500,000 and accounting for 10% of Switzerland’s GDP, the construction industry is a heavyweight of the Swiss economy. Every day, an area equivalent to the size of 6,400 car parking spaces is concreted over in Switzerland23. This industry is also the country’s leading source of waste, accounting for more than 80% of the total waste generated annually (8.7 tonnes per inhabitant24): 57 million tonnes of excavation waste and 17 million tonnes of demolition waste25 . Figure 8 shows the different stages of the construction industry and the strategies to make it more circular.

Recycling companies, manufacturers of concrete, aggregates and other construction materials

Companies dedicated to collecting, listing and re-selling second-hand construction materials and elements

Recycling and re-use of waste

TRANSFORMATION

Ecodesign

EXTRACTION CONSTRUCTION

Producers of concrete, gravels, aggregates and other building materials

Businesses specialising in materials extraction General contractors, concrete and construction materials manufacturers, individual masonry contractors

Businesses operating in all the finishings trades

RECYCLING/RECONDITIONING

RECLAMATION/RE-USE

MAINTENANCE/REPAIR

Figure 8  Value chain of the construction industry and its circularity strategy

Legend: Value chain in green and yellow

Strategies to make it more circular

Stakeholder categories for each stage

Circular economy players in this value chain

Businesses specialising in materials extraction

USE DECONSTRUCTION

Individual property owners, businesses, property management companies, public institutions General contractors, building, demolition, recovery and materials identification companies

Roughly two-thirds of the construction industry’s overall environmental impact occurs during the use phase of a building. Heating and wastewater treatment26 are the main culprits. For decades, the industry has been applying demanding quality standards to reduce and optimise the consumption of water and heating, through initiatives such as the Minergie quality labels and the GEAK tool. Greater investment at the planning stage of urban developments and individual buildings would reduce the environmental cost in the long term. Despite this, in a study published in December 201927, the Swiss Federal Office of Energy found that investment decisions relating to energy efficiency tend to be short-termist. It would appear that the industry is due a wake-up call and in need of a paradigm shift.

Upstream, the extraction and supply of materials also impact the environment, and with resources becoming progressively depleted, the amount of energy required to extract them is increasing significantly. This impact is felt mainly outside Switzerland. And despite the fact that the level of construction waste recycling is quite high in Switzerland (70% for mineral deconstruction materials and around 75% for excavation materials), their reclamation and re-use is far from optimal. The current trend is for ‘decycling’, in other words, a process of cascading re-use in which materials are recycled for uses requiring a lower quality, such as backfill materials. The complexity of recycling, its cost and above all the reluctance of industry players to use recycled materials are all contributing to this situation.

A paradigm shift and the central role of the public authorities

With an average of between 3,000 and 4,000 deconstruction permits issued annually in Switzerland28 and the growing difficulty of opening up new extraction sites on Swiss territory29,30, the recycling, reclamation and re-use of materials are important issues for the industry. The circular economy in the construction industry must be accompanied by a change in mindset of what the built environment should be. It must now be looked upon as a stock of materials, an ‘urban mine’.

The situation is changing and public authorities like the Vaud cantonal council now require all new constructions owned by the Canton of Vaud (or in which it has a majority financial stake) to comply with the Minergie-P-ECO standard or demonstrate equivalent performance (at least 50% recycled concrete). Similarly, Zurich is the only canton to prohibit the landfilling of concrete and require polluted waste to be processed31 for re-use. Both of these initiatives are helping to encourage the use of recycled materials. The Federal Office for the Environment is also looking into incorporating reclamation and re-use into construction standards and specific certifications designed to speed up the adoption of these practices32 .

KILIAN JORNET Professional athlete and President of the Kilian Jornet Foundation

It’s about living life at a slower pace to speed up our response to the climate challenge.