Reducing building waste, a major lever to reduce our CO2 emissions!
In any case, it is on the right track.The figure to begin with: 46 million tons of waste for the construction sector in France in 2022 (that's about 11 million elephants en masse if ever).
One of the main solutions envisaged to reduce this waste: to create a real circular economy in the sector. Our buildings are an infinite source of resources: concrete, brick, wooden beam, steel, floor, staircase, sink. All these products designed to last should not be reduced to the status of waste when a building is demolished.
But fortunately several actors are now positioning themselves on the subject of #réemploi and things are moving!
Audelie Le Guillant was at the 4th and last Reuse Innovation Hub of the Digital Deconstruction project, which aims precisely to massively increase the share of reuse in #déconstruction projects, and in 3 years of project, there have been great improvements!
Discussions, pilot projects and inter-European cooperation now make it possible to test relevant tools and change the way things are done. Doors in good condition in a building at the end of its life? What if we put them in a new building! You can even paint them green if you want, but they should no longer become waste if they are still usable. Moreover, according to the definition of ADEME, a waste "corresponds to any material, substance or product that has been thrown away or abandoned because it no longer has a specific use." It is up to us to find new uses for existing resources.
In the wake of the publication of the synthesis of the 6th IPCC assessment cycle which shows us that it is urgent to drastically reduce our emissions, and the means of action, implementing the circular economy in the building industry is one of them. (More reuse means fewer virgin resources to extract and transform and fewer associated emissions).
Ps: small biodiversity reminder: there are less than 50,000 elephants in the world today according to the WWF, far from the 11 million. (Still, it would be cool to have more elephants than construction waste in a future world...)
By Audelie le Guillant of Greenflex
