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Gilli has the role of directing strategic business and research across the Building Futures Group at BRE which includes oversight of energy and resource efficiency, sustainable communities, low carbon design, strategic energy, building performance evaluation, building innovation and process efficiency. This builds upon 22 years of experience in the area of material resource efficiency, primarily in developing best practice in construction and demolition waste management, such as waste benchmarking and prevention programmes and projects.
BRE Background
The BRE Group (BRE and BRE Global) has a history stretching back over 90 years, as a Government Agency, and in recent times as a non-profit body owned by the BRE Trust. The BRE Trust is the largest UK charity dedicated specifically to research and education in the built environment.
BRE helps government, industry and business to meet the challenges of our built environment. BRE is an independent and impartial, research-based consultancy, testing and training organisation, offering expertise in every aspect of the built environment and associated industries. We help clients create better, safer and more sustainable products, buildings, communities and businesses – and we support the innovation needed to achieve this.
Britisch Research Establishment (BRE)
BRE have been working in the area of Construction Resource Efficiency for over 40 years, with rapid improvements taking place over the last 5 to 10 years. This is particularly evident in the decreasing levels of landfill and disposal for construction related waste in many EU countries today. Instruments such as disposal taxes and bans on recyclables at landfill sites have been very effective in shifting the economic and technical viability towards recycling, to the point that 95%+ recycling rates for demolition waste is fairly typical in countries such as UK, Netherlands and Germany.
Less well developed is the drive to reduce primary material requirements for construction. For example, in the UK, around 350 MT of materials are needed to sustain the built environment, with around 90 MT of waste still being produced. Much of this will go back into construction applications, but often in applications that could be supplied by lower quality materials from other sectors. There are many approaches that could be deployed to reduce material consumption, including increasing the reuse of components and materially efficient design.
The development of such approaches and new business models to support the circular economy are gaining support across Europe. The European Commission is aiming to present a new, more ambitious circular economy strategy late in 2015, to transform Europe into a more competitive resource-efficient economy, addressing a range of economic sectors, including the built environment. The new strategy will include a new legislative proposal on waste targets, although there is already a target to achieve 70% recycling and recovery of construction and demolition waste across the EU by 2020. BRE are currently working on an EC commissioned project to understand progress each Member State (MS) is making towards reaching this target and best practices that could be transferred from the best performing MS to those who have a many challenges to meeting this target.
Ideally, development of longer term EU strategies should consider longer term trends that could affect our future built environment. This includes issues such as climate change adaptation and increasing urbanisation. In the most extreme cases, we could be creating very resource intensive infrastructure that has a very limited life span. A greater awareness of future requirements is crucial when designing and constructing products that we expect to last for 60 years or more.
In many ways, the thematic area of construction resource efficiency is becoming more complex and less transparent as construction approaches become more diverse and the legal & economic considerations less predictable. Therefore, some conclusions and recommendations on where attention may be focussed in the next few years will conclude this presentation.
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Lecture Title – Construction Resource Efficiency: Trends & Analysis
BRE have been working in the area of Construction Resource Efficiency for over 40 years, with rapid improvements taking place over the last 5 to 10 years. This presentation will consider the areas where change has occurred and the underlying factors and drivers. Much research and development has supported the transition from high levels of landfill to high levels of recycling prevalent across many EU countries today. However, there is still a long way to go in terms of reducing the construction sector dependence on primary materials. Also, there are trends that need to be considered that could increase material resource requirements to create and sustain the built environment of the future. Key recommendations for further research and evidence needs will form the conclusion of this presentation.
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