Reusing and recycling timber for a circular construction
With a budget of circa 20 million euros and 30 partners, SirkTRE is one of Norway’s biggest R&D projects of its kind. It is managed by Omtre AS and counts 6 work packages. Ola Rostad is the leader for task SirkGLOBAL, the work package which is responsible for networking and outreach internationally.
Annually, in Norway, 3 million cubic metres of timber get incinerated which could have served society in multiple ways, including in new and renovation construction projects. This incineration generates greenhouse gases that could have been stored longer. In 2022, SIVA (Industrial Development Corporation of Norway), Innovation Norway and the Research Council of Norway co-funded SirkTRE, a project initiated by the Norwegian Wood Cluster which aims to spearhead the circularity transition of the timber building industry and relevant stakeholders and partners.
The SirkTRE project has identified that when a wooden building is demolished and the materials are disposed of, or incinerated, this represents a missed opportunity for harvesting valuable resources and it negatively impacts sustainability goals by creating waste and releasing CO2
Alarmingly, the disposal of traditional construction materials at the end of their lifecycle contributes to 25% of all waste in Norway.
The project team proposes an alternative approach, which is to dismantle buildings and structures carefully and methodically, piece by piece so that those valuable wood materials can be reused and processed to be new products used in further construction projects. This simple but effective premise will have enormous implications if rolled out as a sustainable model for the industry.
“The climate issue is one of the biggest driving forces for this project. We need to use resources in a smarter way in the future. This project is about reinventing how this is done. The normal way of using wood is that you use it once and then you burn it, and you release the carbon dioxide but if you can reuse the wood, the carbon can stay in the wood for a much longer time,” said Rostad.
Big strides with smaller footprints
SirkTRE’s ambition is to turn half of today’s wood waste into building products by 2030. If successful, the carbon footprint will be reduced to a level that represents 8% of Norway’s commitments in the Paris
Agreement, which aims to limit global warming to 1.5°C by the end of the century. This 8% implies a reduction of 10,000 tonnes of CO2 equivalents by 2030 made possible because as long as the wood remains intact, it will continue to store carbon.
“The construction industry makes up for one-third of the carbon footprint in the world, so this is a big idea.”
Beyond environmental assessments and compiling data for Environmental Product Declarations (EPD), in a more practical push,
the project is identifying and adopting the most suitable technology to check the quality of reclaimed wood, to ensure it is fit to be reused or recycled after being taken from defunct buildings.
To contribute to a thriving marketplace with products made from reclaimed timber, different SirkTRE partner teams are co-developing and testing digital solutions for data capture to make reclaimed wood more available to different customers on different platforms. The logistics involved in the reuse and recycling of the wood, the intricacies of the value chain and the life cycle of the timber are all in the research, development and innovation.
The research partners for the circular wood economy
A sister project entwined with SirkTRE is CircWOOD (Circular use of wood for increased sustainability and innovation) which aims to explores the potentials and benefits of improved circular use of wood in Norway. Whilst SirkTRE focuses more on industry and R&D suppliers, CircWOOD consists of research institutes and universities that are providing scientific support to enable SirkTRE developing new technologies based upon circular economy principles. For example, one deliverable is
educating Masters’ and PhD candidates to be effective in Norway’s future circular wood economy. The work from these two projects is woven closely in collaboration.
“For both the industrial and the academic partners, the emphasis is on new knowledge and creating robust and productive international networking,” explained Rostad.
CircWOOD is also tasked with finding effective ways to simplify and streamline processes with digital methods – for collecting,
Digital tools can make a big difference in all the steps from mapping, to dismantling the building to storing the data.
You need to make this value chain digital so you have this information available, so you have a lot of data from existing buildings that you can match with the needs of the new buildings or renovation projects in the best possible ways.
You can use AI to describe each piece of wood and its quality, so you end up with a description of a product that can fit into a new building.
“The climate issue is one of the biggest driving forces for this project. We need to use resources in a smarter way in the future. This project is about reinventing how this is done.”
analysing and sharing key data on timber. It’s imperative to have an efficient system to filter out damaged, weakened and contaminated wood and any material that is not fit for reuse or recycling. Herein lies the challenge, as with every deconstructed building it will be necessary to handle and process large quantities of timber in this sorting phase. It is a problem that the project is addressing, turning to innovative technology for some of the meticulous work.
Further to this, CircWOOD will look at how political frameworks affect the circular use of wood and what impacts it will have on the economy. Similarly, the SirkTRE project’s industrial partners are viewing the research and new methodologies as a learning exercise, an exploration of new techniques, in a Norwegian and European policy landscape that will introduce increasing legislation and policy in coming years to push the Green Deal, Circular Economy Plan and the Taxonomy.
Reclaiming timber from donor buildings and material banks
The first step in the process of reusing materials in an existing building is to map out the structure in all its component parts. This is simpler in structures like barns and cabins as many modern homes and structures are complex in terms of how they are made and what they are made of.
“It’s easier to locate reusable wood from buildings from the early 1900s or 1800s, than from more modern buildings from the last centuries. Modern buildings consist of a mixture of materials that makes it increasingly difficult to sort out reusable wood.”
Scanning so-called ‘donor buildings’ is part of the work package Sirk-Byggkart. The concept central to this new approach
step is to deconstruct the structure, which is not the normal way. The normal method is simply to tear it down and burn it. We want to prolong the use of the wood and the materials. If you just tear it down, you have a mixture of materials and you have to sort out wood which may be hard to find in the mess. And if you tear it down it’s improbable you can reuse it. So instead, we map the building and then deconstruct it. Then you can categorise, store and finally install the material into another building.”
Other work packages are connected with the deconstruction itself and the storage place. One of the partners is Sirkulær Resurrssentral in Oslo, a 4000 sqm storage place for only reclaimed construction materials.
“You need to make this value chain digital so you have this information available, so you have a lot of data from existing buildings that you can match for the needs of the new buildings in the best possible ways.”
is to view a suitable building as a material bank. Donor buildings can be mapped before they are dismantled. The materials made available from the dismantling can be used not just in one new building but in multiple structures, as long as all the parts are inspected, sorted and stored effectively. It’s a relatively simple and neat idea but it will take a radical upheaval of commercial norms in the construction trade and there are practical challenges that require solutions to be developed.
“You need to map the construction and understand what kind of wood could be reused and that could also include windows and doors, that is the first part. The next
Norway knows a prolific number of barns, many which are not used anymore and a waste of materials. Unsurprisingly, SirkTRE has a whole work package dedicated to barns, called SirkLÅVE. The barns have become a focus for the researchers to develop techniques to assess, quantify and process timber assets they have when it’s time to take them down. A point cloud is created and dimensions of the barn are recorded. One of the involved partners is OMTRE, which is also managing the whole SirkTRE consortium. OMTRE is also linking SirkLÅVE with the new Horizon Europe project DRASTIC, by working with barns as donation buildings in the Nordic Pilot.
www.euresearcher.com
SirkTRE
SirkTRE - establish the circular wood value chain
Project Objectives
SirkTRE is a large-scale project in Norway to ensure timber in old buildings is not destroyed when the building is taken down and instead categorised, stored and made available for reuse in construction and renovation projects. This ensures the recycling of materials in an efficient method, with the added benefit of storing rather than releasing CO2
Project Funding
Co-funded by Green Platform (Innovation Norway, SIVA (Industrial Development Corporation of Norway) and the Research Council of Norway) and the project partners.
Project Partners
30 business and R&D partners
Project owner Omtre AS.
Initiated by Norwegian Wood Cluster.
https://www.sirktre.no/en/partnere
Contact Details
Project Manager SirkTRE
Kristine Nore
Founder of OMTRE AS
E: kristine.nore@omtre.no
Project manager CircWOOD
Lone Ross
Head of Department - Head of Research NIBIO
E: lone.ross@nibio.no
Task leader SirkGLOBAL
Ola Rostad
CEO Tretorget AS
T: +47 911 53 636
Learn More
W SirkTRE: https://www.SirkTRE.no
W CirkWOOD: https://www.nibio.no/ en/projects/circular-use-of-wood-forincreased-sustainability-and-innovationcircwood?locationfilter=true Films: https://www.youtube.com/@SirkTRE
Ola Rostad
Ola Rostad is the Task Leader for SirkGLOBAL and is working towards the internationalisation of the results and boosting international cooperation. He is an experienced CEO with a demonstrated history of working within fundraising and innovation management.
