2023-04-07 | Encouraging reusability and recyclability to reduce whole life-cycle greenhouse gas emissions
Moving to a more circular and a less carbon intensive building environment are the two main challenges that are fully embraced by policy makers and the metal construction industry alike. Today, the debates on carbon impacts in the building sector tend to be restricted to the embodied carbon related to initial production and to the operational carbon related to the use-stage, which can mean that the end-of-life stage is neglected. This restrictive approach cannot properly consider the efforts made to design products for reuse or for recycling or to design buildings for adaptability, flexibility or dismantling. Hence, to avoid that the products of today become the waste of tomorrow, the metal industry recommends using a full life cycle approach as described in the attached paper.