Introducing a circular construction hub for building material circularity in city

Abstract

The Dutch government has published the circular economy goal, which aims to reduce 50% consumption of raw materials by 2030 and realize full circularity by 2050. The goal leads the promotion of the sustainability development, particularly, on improving the resilience of the self-sufficient material supply chain in the Dutch economy. As one of the largest raw material consumers, the construction sector has urgent demand on the solution towards building circularity, which mainly indicates as increasing the use of secondary materials, and reducing the demolition and construction waste. Accordingly, the municipality of Leiden takes the leading role of circular transition, and seeks for the practical solution in construction sector at the local scale.
The circular construction hub is brought out as an effective solution to the building material circularity transition. A series conceptual development and a few pilot projects in Utrecht and Amsterdam were established, the effectiveness is proved by the promising results of transportation reduction, and recycling rate improvement.
Regardless numbers of the studies on the building material flow analysis and the development of the hubs in various forms, limited discussion of practical information for local hubs’ development is provided, and little quantitative analysis of the implementation of the circular construction hub was conducted. Decision making for the intermediate steps in the transition towards building material circularity, therefore, has little referencing information.
Hence, this research proposes the main research question as: How will the circular construction hub support the transition of building material circularity in the cities of the Netherlands? In order to explore the formation and the influence of the circular construction hub in city with the case study of Leiden. The research firstly specifies the formation of the hub by desk research; then quantifies the urban mining potential and handling capacity of the hub by Material Flow Analysis (MFA); then the suitability analysis of the hub’s location is provided by the Geographical Information System (GIS) based on the transportation emission (CO2 eq kg).
The research aims to draw a comprehensive understanding on the metabolic characteristics of building material flows with implementation of the circular construction hub, and provide a referencing value for municipality’s decision making on developing the hub in city Leiden, and further development in the cities of the Netherlands.