Remanufacturing – Turning the building industry circular

News - 04 February 2019 - Circular Built Environment Hub

On 22 January 2019, the Circular Built Environment Hub in collaboration with EIT Raw Materials organised a workshop on remanufacturing of building products at the Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment. The event attracted stakeholders interested in moving the building industry towards a circular economy. Participants included building product manufacturers, academics, building contractors, consultants, engineers and architects from both The Netherlands and Germany. 

The workshop included lectures about remanufacturing, as well as exercises that allowed the participants to imagine how their own company could start remanufacturing. During the exercise, companies discussed the possibility of reverse logistics in the building industry, keeping track of building products throughout their lifetime, and how different stakeholders in the industry could collaborate in order to make this happen. At the end of the workshop, a participant noted: “The issues we’ve discussed today cannot be solved by one company alone. The problems of the linear economy are systemic, so our solutions need to be systemic too.”

The workshop was organised by Tanya Tsui, David Peck, Tillmann Klein and Juan Azcarate-Aguerre, researchers of the Circular Built Environment Hub, Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment.