Buildings as Material Banks: Integrating Materials Passports with Reversible Building Design to Optimise Circular Industrial Value Chains

The aims of BAMB (Buildings as Material Banks) are the prevention of construction and demolition waste, the reduction of virgin resource consumption and the development towards a circular economy through industrial symbiosis, addressing the challenges mentioned in the Work Programme on Climate action, environment, resource efficiency and raw materials. The focus of the project is on building construction and process industries (from architects to raw material suppliers).
The BAMB-project implements the principles of the waste hierarchy: the prevention of waste, its reuse and recycling. Key is to improve the value of materials used in buildings for recovery. This is achieved by developing and integrating two complementary value adding frameworks, (1) materials passports and (2) reversible building design. These frameworks will be able to change conventional (cradle-to-grave) building design, so that buildings can be transformed to new functions (extending their life span) or disassembled to building components or material feedstock that can be upcycled in new constructions (using materials passports). This way, continuous loops of materials are created while large amounts of waste will be prevented.
Activities from research to market introduction are planned. Fundamental knowledge gaps should be bridged in order to introduce both frameworks on the market. Advanced ICT tools and management models will enable market uptake and the organization of circular value chains in building and process industries. New business models for (circular) value chains will be developed and tested on selected materials. The inclusion of strategic partners along the value chains in an industrial board will maximize market replicability potential, while several (mostly privately funded) building pilots will demonstrate the potential of the new techniques. Awareness will be raised to facilitate the transition towards circularity by policy reform and changing consumer behavior.