Search

Soil has been used as building material for thousands of years with a decrease in popularity after the industrial revolution. Nowadays, there is a growing interest in the implementation of unfired soil-based building solutions for their low environmental impact, performances and availability. Traditional soil construction techniques have recurrently included vegetal fibres to enhance soil performance and recent studies highlight a predominant use of agro- and non-agro-waste for unfired soil construction. The article reviews the state-of-the-art of the use of excavated soil and biowaste in the construction industry including a novel focus on urban-only waste and on building technologies using the integration of these two secondary construction material flows. Our literature review highlights a lack of references about the joint use of these secondary resources. Finally, future research orientations are suggested to promote their implementation in the building sector, which could improve urban waste management.

Circular economy is concerned with rethinking economic models to reduce both the pressure on resources and the generation of waste. The implementation of such models often implies new forms of coordination across different processes, actors, and scales. The literature on value chains has struggled to conceptualize such transitions. Recent contributions have advocated that circular economy initiatives give rise to new “value systems” rather than conventional value chains. Empirical studies on how such “circular value systems” come about are still rare and lack a firm conceptual basis. We close this gap by applying a conceptual framework to three case studies, respectively, concerned with material flows of excavated earth, urban wood, and coffee grounds. Our results provide novel empirical evidence on value creation in circular economy initiatives.

Circular economy is concerned with rethinking economic models to reduce both the pressure on resources and the generation of waste. The implementation of such models often implies new forms of coordination across different processes, actors and scales. The literature on value chains has struggled to conceptualise such transitions. Recent contributions have advocated to frame circular economy initiatives as giving rise to new ‘value systems’ rather than conventional value chains. Empirical studies on how such ‘circular value systems’ come about are still rare and lack a firm conceptual basis. We close this gap by applying a conceptual framework to three case studies, respectively concerned with material flows of excavated earth, urban wood and coffee grounds. Our results provide novel empirical evidence on value creation in circular economy initiatives., info:eu-repo/semantics/inPress