Re-use of Building Products in the Netherlands

摘要

Over the years, the consumption of materials for construction exceeded more than half of the total materials consumed in the Netherlands, and construction waste exceeded the volume of solid waste produced by households. Since the introduction of the "Ladder van Lansink" (in the 1970’s) and the further development of the European Waste Framework Directives followed by the Circular Economy concept, waste prevention has been considered a priority measure. Whereas the goals to improve waste management towards waste-to-resource and waste elimination evolved from guidelines to political action (throughout the EU), reuse of products remained a less implicit strategy. The reuse of building products is an ancient practice; nonetheless, limited information is available regarding the aspects involved in the existing process. Reuse of building products has seen limited regulatory changes and remained a vague procedure within the resource efficiency discourse in the Netherlands.Building products remain in use for long time spans, which affects the planning and integration of strategies to recover them for reuse. When they are released from buildings (after renovation or demolition) and recovered, these products may not be compatible with new updated technical building requirements, or may not be competitive with upgraded, certified and cheaper new products.The weight, size, and practical challenges to deconstruct buildings are also factors affecting the harvest of such products. Besides these technical and economic aspects, used goods are susceptible to subjective evaluation regarding their "style" and used appearance. Contrary to different forms of waste treatment that transform used products into commodities; used products have intrinsic cultural, historical and aesthetic values influencing their economic value.To foster the integration of industrial activities to promote more efficient use of resources from the anthropogenic environment, it requires a better understanding of the constraints and opportunities among relations within a non-linear economy.This research departs from the desire to understand the practice of reuse of building products from a systemic standpoint, to illuminate its current condition and help to foresee future perspectives.SystemThe holistic approach in this research implies the investigation and representation of a network of multiple factors influencing the process of reusing in analogy to the nature of sustainability as a systemic concept that infers a holistic construction of different conceptual subsets.To perceive the continuity of the strategy of reuse, this research positions the object of study from an evolutionary perspective where relations condition the action of reuse. These relations are dynamic and contextually bounded defining the commercial feasibility of products to be reused rather than wasted.Understanding these relations enables to construct an analytical discourse that takes into consideration a multidisciplinary approach from which different strategies can be designed while contemplating their connectivity.From a pragmatic research tradition, the central research question explored is:What are the perspectives for reuse of building products from the housing stock, given contextual factors that influence the process chain and reserves?The Industrial Ecology concept provides a system’s perspective and the foundation of this study’s methodological framework to answer the main research question. It postulates that the internal relations of the industrial process, as well as relations that go beyond the industrial boundary, are sources of perturbations in the natural system, which is driven by human activities and motivate changes in material and substance flows by demand for services provided by products.Through this systemic perspective, to effectuate reuse of building products in the Netherlands, this research proposes to examine this practice as an industrial ecosystem. It describes the activities; actors and how different factors influence the process of building products' reuse.This research is the result of a collaboration between the Faculty of Industrial Design Engineering and Architecture and the Built environment of TU Delft to construct a multi-scale scope ranging product thinking and regional resource management. The investigation departs from the following assumptions:Reuse of products brings environmental benefits.This study does not evaluate which conditions and what are the environmental benefits of reuse. Nonetheless, the study acknowledges that not one-measure fits all, nor that reuse is the best measure in all contexts. The study departs from the premise established by existing guidelines in waste management and the CE (Circular Economy) concept that waste prevention including reuse should be prioritized.Assessing singular aspects of reuse can lead to limited or partial interpretations, risking future ineffective action plans or their c