Material Flows In Buildings’ Life Cycle And Regions – Material Inventories To Support Planning Towards Circular Economy

The built environment is the cause of most of the material flows in the anthroposphere and the biggest material storage: Over 90 % of the anthropogenic stock stored in durable goods can be found in the built environment, with non-metallic minerals being the main contributor. In Germany, most of the materials that leave the stock due to demolition or renovation are recovered. In Saxony, a German state, the recovery rate is nearly 99 % but only 55% of mineral construction and demolition waste is recycled. There is still substantial potential for closing recycling loops. This requires the combined effort of all those actors that influence these material flows – from the investor and constructor of the single building to those responsible for waste management at municipal level and the waste disposal and construction materials industry. However, the information currently available is insufficient to support an effective urban mining. This will be encountered by an ongoing research project that aims to enhance existing informational instruments regarding construction related material flows in the built environment. The project follows a dualistic research approach considering informational instruments at (1) individual building level and (2) at regional level. The objective of the paper is to present an approach on how material inventories can be better aligned with practical information needs. After introducing the overall concept and methodology as well as describing the process of analysing the current state of information flows, first results considering the structure of material in- and outputs and the needs for information of different actors are presented.