Abstract
About 35% of all waste in Flanders comes from construction and demolition activities. However, that waste often contains a large proportion of reusable materials. The project (GEO-CBE) aims to develop an integrated digital tool to geolocalise construction and demolition waste (CDW) and its flows. We aim to identify the spatial, economic and environmental parameters in order to recognise the optimal location of temporary, permanent, or even movable hubs for the recycling of these building materials.
In the actual moment of material scarcity and shortages, constraints and high material prices, in addition to geopolitical and carbon reduction targets faced by Flanders and Europe, urgent research is needed on the reuse and recycling of CDW. Hence, there is an urgency to understand the network of stock, construction, and demolition waste flows, in order to elaborate a network of temporary and permanent locations - Circular Hubs (CHs) - to collect, store and redistribute waste as secondary raw materials.
Sustainable and future-proof waste management systems must respond to the growing demand for real circular systemic solutions, with the construction sector in Flanders offering a great deal of potential. The increasing demand for housing, combined with increasingly higher standards for (life) quality, energy, and the environment, has led to a drastic increase in the demand for building materials (e.g. wood, concrete, and steel). Therefore, within the contemporary debate on resource scarcity and waste recycling in cities, circularity as an approach to reduce waste is gaining large interest. However, local stakeholders, policymakers, large developer companies, and companies in the construction and demolition business lack knowledge of CDW fluxes and stock, and miss the appropriate tools to adopt their construction and demolition processes. How can material from construction and demolition activities become available and, instead of waste, be understood as a resource for urban projects? The built environment with high material concentrations (stocks) and many construction and demolition activities are often promising for recycling CDW. However, where and how to develop CHs remains to be answered. GEO-CBE project aims to address these needs by developing an integrated digital tool to support stakeholders in the construction and demolition sector. In particular, the project has three key objectives:
1. to develop a platform to visualize a spatial material flow analysis of three construction and demolition waste streams namely wood, concrete, and steel in Flanders, in 2020-2021-2022.
2. based on spatial material flow analysis results, develop different scenarios to identify possible locations and parameters to implement different types of hubs to store, recycle, and reuse CDW.
3. develop an environmental impact assessment to evaluate the performance of different scenarios and identify the best solutions.
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