How Can Materials Passports Enable a Circular Economy?
Specifying and producing materials passports for all new developments will help increase the awareness and popularity of these tools in order to encourage developers of buildings of all sizes to document how “circular” their assets really are.
Written by
Dan Coupland
Sustainability Consultant
To contact please email:
dan.coupland@mainer.co.uk
What are Materials Passports?
Materials passports serve as a “passport” of each material installed into a building. This helps building developers, owners and tenants understand what exactly has been installed into the building and how “circular” those materials and products are.
Materials passports are datasets and reliable information consisting of the entire value chain-specifications of the materials used, and specific supply chains involved from the sources to producers, distributors and consumers or users; and technical facts to improve the re-use or recycling of materials and to enhance their residual value. Hoosain et al., 2021 - Material Passports and Circular Economy | SpringerLink
A materials passport can be as complex or as simple as the person undertaking it wants it to be. However, a materials passport with more detailed and relevant information will be of much greater value to the building occupiers as they can understand where materials have come from and ascertain what exactly makes up the fabric of their building.
10 Ways Architects can include Circular Economy in Future Builds
In our previous article, we outline the main principles of a circular economy.
‘10 Ways Architects can include Circular Economy in Future Builds’.
Please click on the link to read the article.
What is a Circular Economy?
Essentially, Circular Economy is based on three principles, driven by design
2. Circulate products and materials (at their highest value)
3. Regenerate nature
Source: Ellen Macarthur Foundation - What is a circular economy? | Ellen MacArthur Foundation
Recently, the impact of circularity has been felt with regards to solar panels for example. Despite being used a great source of renewable energy, recent reports indicate that there is not enough infrastructure to cope with solar panels needing to be replaced and recycled in the next 5-10 years. Therefore, any material or product, regardless of their sustainability credentials, need to be designed with circular thinking in mind, to ensure that circular economy practices can be facilitated at end of life.
Circular economy principles usually come into play at the end of the life of a building, and it will quickly be apparent if the building being demolished has been designed with circular thinking in mind. The more materials which can be recycled or repurposed will help to reduce virgin resource use for new developments.
The BAMB (Building as Material Banks) is an EU Horizon 2020 project enabling a systemic shift to a circular building sector and sees buildings as repositories or stockpiles of valuable materials. The BAMB project helped create one of the first, and leading templates, for a materials passport to aid industry in documenting their building circularity, with the aim to reduce waste from the building sector. Many materials passport successors have taken inspiration from the BAMB (Materials Passports - BAMB (bamb2020.eu)).
Where’s the link?
Materials passports can act as a conduit for circular economy principles, as they are digital libraries of the circularity of products and materials. But just how is this achieved?
Materials passports can be undertaken by many different stakeholders throughout the value chain of a building as well as delivering a multitude of value propositions, one of which is the ability to influence innovation and the design of products. If materials passports are shared within the industry, then this allows other stakeholders to specify products with good circularity. Eventually this should trickle down and convince manufacturers to increase the circularity of their products, as well as associated processes, in order to be considered for future developments.
However, as mentioned prior, the level of detail within a passport, and its inherent validity, is the most important metric with regards to how useful materials passports can be in order to facilitate circular economy principles. Just having a bank of information, such as: Product name, GTIN number, location in building, or material classification, does not give any pertinence to how circular those building materials and products are.
To fully support circular economy principles, materials passports need to include information such as: recycled content, repairability, replacements, if the product can be downcycled or recycled, weight, and detachability amongst others. Essentially, a product may have good CE potential, but the passport acts as an enabler to fulfil that potential. By manufacturers displaying transparency in their information dissemination, and the creator of the materials passports collating the relevant information, then materials passports can act as a simple, but effective way of displaying building circularity, digitally (Bimstore - What are Materials Passports? | bimstore | Resources).
Materials Passports and Mainer
When Mainer undertakes a materials passport, we evaluate the different ways of achieving the desired level of detail the client has specified. Our approach aims to streamline data capture, and to ensure that all relevant building elements, materials, and products have been documented. This is to ensure transparency across the building for the building owner and occupier.
Once this has been completed, we populate any further information that we deem appropriate, such as the types of information mentioned above. By being very specific, detailed, and transparent, we are providing the building developer with a materials passport which demonstrates the circularity of the building and will aid across the life cycle of the building with regards to repairs and replacement information for example. Keeping this passport up to date will ensure that if replacements are needed, that the building owner can easily specify the same or similar product to ensure the building is still displaying a high level of circularity throughout its life cycle.
Are you are interested in completing a materials passport?
Mainer can help facilitate this and advise on the best solutions and level of detail required. To find out more, please get in touch via the following link: hello@mainer.co.uk
References:
Hoosain, M.S., Paul, B.S., Raza, S.M. and Ramakrishna, S., (2021). Material passports and circular economy. An Introduction to Circular Economy, pp.131-158.
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