Closing the glass loop. Prototyping a practitioner's road map to valorise end-of-life architectural flat glass

In Europe, the building sector is responsible for almost a quarter of
the total mass of generated waste and hence has a major
environmental impact. To reduce that impact, the Flemish region, like
others, has put forward the ambition to realise an economy of closed
material loops by 2025.
Architectural flat glass is a fully recyclable material, but continues to
follow a linear, wasteful path from renovation and demolition sites
into landfill or low-value recycling. Yet, various niche practices
illustrate that technologies and skills are at hand to repair, reuse and
recycle flat glass at high value. What lacks is the proper transfer of
this information into concrete guidance of practitioners.
As a response to this knowledge gap, the research aims at
developing a practitioner’s road map – serving as a prototype for
other waste flows – to support all practitioners of the building sector
in valorising end-of-life flat glass. To achieve this, two questions are
key. First, which circular strategies allow to maximise the value of flat
glass in a closed material loop with a minimal environmental impact?
And second, how can practitioners collectively implement those
strategies in building projects?
By the involvement of practice’s stakeholders throughout the
research, a road map will be developed, tested and validated to
support designers, engineers and contractors in making betterinformed choices, close the flat glass loop and make the transition to
the circular economy happen.