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The residential built environment plays a crucial role in supporting many human activities. In urban areas however, high-rise residential buildings require significant investment of material resources, which are stacked for a long time over the building's lifetime. Assessing the Material Stock (MS) of buildings has been the focus of several studies for insights into in-use materials and their potential availability as secondary resources. The study of material circularity, or the potential to reuse materials emerging from end-of-life buildings, has so far been mostly limited to metals. This study argues that material stock analysis at individual material or material categories e.g. mineral, or metals, need to be complemented with building component stock estimations to enhance the potential for secondary resource recovery. Based on a bottom-up stock analysis approach, we estimate both the material and component stock of public housing developments in the city-state of Singapore and associated annual in- and out-flows.

The Construction Industry is responsible for over 30% of the extraction of natural resources, as well as 25% of solid waste generated in the world. This happens because the construction sector mostly adopts a linear economic model of “take, make, dispose”, using materials to the construction of buildings and disposing them at the end of life, since they are assembled for one time use and don’t retain potential for reuse. Over the last decades, a paradigm shift has been occurring in the industry at large, with the adoption of a Circular Economy model, that aims at keeping the materials in a closed loop to retain their maximum value, therefore with a greater potential of reducing the waste generation and resources extraction for the Construction Industry. This article aims at finding the recent developments of how Circular Economy can be used inside the construction industry. To achieve this goal, a systematic liter- ature review was conducted, including 45 articles that were divided into six areas of research: devel- opment of Circular Economy, reuse of materials, material stocks, Circular Economy in the built environment, LCA analysis and material passport. An analysis of the content of these articles was made and the knowledge gaps in this area were identified, as well as table with known Circular Economy practices for the Construction Industry was created divided by life cycle stages. Finally, a discussion of each area of research and their findings is made. ©

Como nuestros aprendizajes nos dan para llevarnos a soluciones de gran escala. A ver si se hace ... Este excelente artículo de BBC Mundo describe como también el COVID 19 nos está mostrando una casas profundas y estructurales que están mal en la organización de la sociedad mundial. COVID 19 en relación con la construcción de infraestructura el la Amazona y otros lugares semejantes vinculado con la extracción de recursos naturales, con el consumo de carne y el tamaño de la humanidad. La escala de análisis muchas veces es demasiado pequeño para el tipo de desafíos como el COVID 19. Necesitamos ver la salud a la escala del sistema ecológico mundial. Muy recomendado el artículo. Pensando en COVID 19, la salud en general, y la sustentabilidad. También la economía circular es parte de una posible solución.