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Our buildings contain enormous amounts of valuable materials. However, for these to actually be reused after renovation or demolition, more than just good intentions are required. What is crucial is information about which materials are present, where they are located, what quality they are in, how they can be separated, and where they can be put to use again.
This is precisely where building material cadasters and material passports come in. They create transparency regarding the resources present in existing structures, thereby forming an important foundation for urban mining and future material cycles.
The building material cadaster of the City of Munich, which EPEA developed together with Madaster, demonstrates how this can look in practice. In the pilot area of Feldmoching-Hasenbergl, around 7,500 buildings were surveyed. Among other things, more than 4.4 million tons of concrete and over 200,000 tons of metal were identified in the building stock.
Another example is the LOOP market in Haimhausen by Ratisbona Handelsimmobilien. More than 250 products were analyzed there in terms of their ingredients. A building material passport also documents the materials used, their ease of disassembly, and their potential for future reuse.
However, transparency alone is not enough. For existing materials to actually become secondary raw materials for new construction projects, appropriate structures are needed: regional secondary raw material centers, suitable logistics concepts, and standardized reuse and deconstruction processes.
Peter Mösle and Marcel Özer explain what such an infrastructure could look like and the role the construction industry plays in the European resource transition in the latest article from Börsen-Zeitung.
The full article, "Resource transition requires functioning infrastructure," is available in the Börsen-Zeitung.