(D05) Materials Reuse: It’s a Change Management Challenge

The linear, take-make-waste material flows of the past have no place in a sustainable future. Designing buildings with new materials generates 11% of global greenhouse gas emissions, and extracting materials (including mining and logging) can devastate ecosystems. At the other end of the chain, the building industry generates the lion’s share of solid waste in the U.S. Reusing materials eliminates all these impacts, provides meaningful job opportunities and captures a value stream that is just abandoned now.

The momentum of activity to solve these problems is unprecedented. Global tech companies with gigantic supply chains are focusing on circularity, design and construction firms are participating in copious roundtables and summits, NGOs and startups are creating new solutions and policies are being created every month in local governments and corporations. All of this activity is critical and has highlighted the extensive disconnects and gaps where solutions are needed.

The best solutions start with proactive measures, such as designing new buildings with future deconstruction in mind. The best way to do this consistently is to update standard detail libraries that support disassembly. At building turnover, new owners have to allocate time to assess what's deconstructible and plan for doing that. With today’s typical tight timelines, that might mean giving reclamation experts access to the building even before the closing. Between the gaps and disconnects and the kinds of proactive shifts we need to see, the true remedy is a mix of policy, technology and behavior change; the latter perhaps being the most challenging.

In this session, experienced industry experts will illustrate the opportunities for dramatically expanding materials reuse, outline the barriers, and demonstrate change-management strategies to overcome them. We’ll also show how the behavior shifts needed to solve this design and construction challenge represent win-win opportunities for improving workflows and outcomes on a variety of projects as well as how to take these solutions to scale.