#98: Circular Economy: Making Material Reuse Happen at Scale, with Material Index

[00:00:09] Welcome to The Green Urbanist, a podcast for urbanists fighting climate change. I'm Ross.

[00:00:24] Hello, hello. Today's episode is a conversation with Morgan Lewis.

[00:00:28] So I'm the CEO and co-founder. I'm with Robin Ellis of a company called Material Index.

[00:00:34] So we're a team of 15 based in Farringdon, London, and we deal with all aspects of the circular economy in construction.

[00:00:42] In the UK, 60% of all waste comes from the construction industry and only 2% of building components are reused currently.

[00:00:52] There is a lot of potential for this to be scaled up and therefore to mitigate the waste, wasted materials,

[00:00:59] but also the carbon emissions associated with extracting new materials and the environmental harm that comes along with that.

[00:01:07] So Material Reuse and Circular Economy more general is growing in awareness as an important sustainability action to take within the built environment.

[00:01:18] So in this episode, Morgan really gets into the details of this a bit more and explains how the company that he has co-founded, Material Index,

[00:01:27] are trying to tackle this by working with building owners, contractors and project teams to make Material Reuse happen at scale.

[00:01:34] And he talks about, you know, the potential that has to scale up dramatically, but also some of the challenges in particular materials that are harder to reuse than others.

[00:01:44] The way that things like office refits are actually driving a lot of the waste.

[00:01:48] And that's, you know, one place where we can step in and start diverting materials away.

[00:01:53] So he gives a lot of really, really good advice and tips and insights from, you know, working in this field as closely as he does.

[00:02:01] Really, really good introductory conversation.

[00:02:04] If you're new to the world of circular economy and material reuse and you want to understand actually what does this mean for your projects day to day?

[00:02:13] How can you get started?

[00:02:14] And he gives some advice.

[00:02:16] If you want to learn more about Material Index, and I'd recommend heading to their website,

[00:02:21] that is material-index.co.uk.

[00:02:25] And the link is in the episode description.

[00:02:28] Really enjoyed this conversation and I hope you do too.

[00:02:30] So enjoy this conversation with Morgan.

[00:02:35] Before we sort of get into what Material Index do, can you just give us a bit of an overview?

[00:02:42] What's the sort of state of play with material reuse in the UK at the moment?

[00:02:45] And why is this something that, you know, you need to be looking at?

[00:02:49] Yeah, so we focus on material reuse in the kind of construction and real estate sector.

[00:02:56] Generally, it's probably fair to say the UK is a bit further behind than a lot of Western and Northern Europe

[00:03:02] in terms of kind of the percentages it's hitting of components that are reused.

[00:03:08] It's probably not widely known, but the construction industry is actually responsible for over 50% of all waste in the UK,

[00:03:16] which is quite shocking when you think that, say, household waste,

[00:03:21] all the waste we individually throw away each year, is about half of that.

[00:03:25] So it's by far the biggest source of waste by volume and by carbon.

[00:03:32] A huge amount of that is actually avoidable.

[00:03:35] So currently, reuse rates are estimated to be between 2% and 6% in the UK.

[00:03:43] And that's quite surprising considering that a lot of components in buildings,

[00:03:48] you know, from sanctuary wear to mechanical systems to doors and iron mongery,

[00:03:55] can actually easily be reused.

[00:03:56] There tends to be quite a lot of technical life left in these components

[00:04:00] at the point when the building is being stripped out or demolished or deconstructed.

[00:04:07] And so, yeah, we think there's huge opportunity for growth in this area.

[00:04:13] Can you paint a picture for us, I suppose, in terms of what happens to,

[00:04:17] let's say a building is demolished for redevelopment,

[00:04:20] like what happens to all that material once that happens?

[00:04:24] Yeah. So whether it's demolished or the kind of the slightly newer term of deconstructed,

[00:04:31] if it's carefully taken down,

[00:04:34] all sorts will happen to the different material streams involved,

[00:04:38] depending on what they are and the type of building.

[00:04:42] A certain percentage of it will already go to some kind of recycling stream.

[00:04:47] So steel, definitely ferrous metals and copper will definitely find their way

[00:04:51] into scrap metal merchants' yard and be melted down.

[00:04:57] Most of our scrap in the UK is sent abroad, about 80% of it.

[00:05:01] That will change once we've got our furnaces up and running,

[00:05:05] but that won't be for a few years.

[00:05:08] Bricks will sometimes be crushed for aggregates,

[00:05:13] but it will still be a relatively low percentage of everything in that building

[00:05:17] will enter a recycling stream.

[00:05:18] And even a recycling stream can actually be quite a large downgrading

[00:05:23] of the potential in the material,

[00:05:26] the value locked in that material as embodied carbon

[00:05:31] or any kind of resource.

[00:05:35] It's quite a complicated world.

[00:05:38] It's a world that not all of us are familiar with.

[00:05:41] My background is, I was an architect

[00:05:43] and I worked in construction for many years, for about a decade.

[00:05:48] And it was only a handful of times that I actually kind of got to see

[00:05:51] what happened to these material streams once they left site.

[00:05:56] But it's a fascinating world.

[00:05:57] And we think the biggest opportunity for improving the kind of environmental performance of this sector,

[00:06:05] so lowering that waste, lowering that loss of carbon during the deconstruction phase of buildings,

[00:06:12] is to see more reuse.

[00:06:13] So it's now possible to reuse whole steel beams instead of settling them to be melted down.

[00:06:20] And it's definitely possible to reuse all sorts of components.

[00:06:23] And that's where we see the biggest opportunity for improving the environmental performance.

[00:06:31] In terms of, do you think a major barrier at the moment is more that the buildings that are being deconstructed

[00:06:40] are not necessarily, you're not necessarily able to extract useful materials?

[00:06:47] Or is it more that people just don't think to actually reuse them?

[00:06:52] Yeah, there's all sorts of reasons why more currently isn't being done.

[00:06:58] And it's probably worth saying that, like, although I point, I paint a relatively great picture of what's going on,

[00:07:05] there is a huge number of great businesses and reclamation businesses that do recover value from buildings.

[00:07:14] I think one thing that perhaps people aren't aware of is how much of this is actually just caused by the refit cycle.

[00:07:21] Actually, a growing percentage is caused by the refit cycle, the regular refit of offices and retail units,

[00:07:28] which are on a much shorter timeframe than they used to be.

[00:07:32] That's down to all sorts of changes in typical lease lengths and the rest of it.

[00:07:36] But a lot of what we deal with is less than 10 years old, and it's in really good condition.

[00:07:46] It's just that a new tenant has come in and wants a different layout or whatever it is, a different architectural style.

[00:07:55] And so it's definitely, it'd be wrong to say that it's possible to recover 100% of the value of all buildings.

[00:08:04] You know, definitely we go into, you know, 1960s office blocks that haven't seen a lick of paint for the last 30 years and are in quite bad nick.

[00:08:15] But it's much higher than that 2% to 6%, which is typical in the industry today.

[00:08:21] We're typically able to commercially resell approximately about 20% of what is in the buildings that we order and broker from.

[00:08:31] Okay, that's interesting.

[00:08:32] Yeah, because I guess where I'm imagining it from is the sort of regeneration cycle.

[00:08:37] But I wasn't necessarily thinking about, yeah, the internal retrofit and that kind of thing.

[00:08:43] But I guess that makes sense to me because it's happening on a much quicker timescale.

[00:08:48] Yeah, yeah.

[00:08:49] And I think the, maybe the elephant in the room from our side is probably something like concrete.

[00:08:57] Like if we come across a concrete frame building, it'll be approximately 70% of the mass of that building.

[00:09:03] And it's extremely hard to find kind of reuse pathways for that.

[00:09:08] There is all sorts of kind of innovation programs to do with, you know, jacking up floors, removing slab panels, moving around columns, or finding better ways of disaggregating the concrete.

[00:09:22] And all of that is fantastic, but it's still a very challenging material to work with.

[00:09:28] Yeah, I can imagine.

[00:09:29] Is the pathway at the moment mostly downgrading integrates?

[00:09:34] Yeah, or yes, essentially some form of crushing.

[00:09:37] Yeah, okay.

[00:09:38] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:09:38] So that can then be used in roads or something like that.

[00:09:42] Yeah, yeah, exactly.

[00:09:45] Yeah, okay.

[00:09:46] So I can see it's a very, that's essentially like the least circular economy you can do in terms of just, you know, taking the material, using it once and then downgrading it.

[00:09:56] You use it again once, but then after that it's kind of ruined.

[00:09:59] So yeah, exactly.

[00:10:01] Exactly.

[00:10:01] And I guess this term circular economy has become much more common in the last kind of decade, even though it's theorized about 35 years ago.

[00:10:13] And it's now going to enter the legislation in London and Scotland and Wales at the EU level as well.

[00:10:24] And as you kind of alluded to, it's all about recognizing that there's all sorts of value in a component once it's made.

[00:10:35] And obviously at the end of life of that component, there's all sorts of options around what we can do with it.

[00:10:40] But it's about trying to retain that value at its highest level.

[00:10:43] So yes, it is a form of either reuse or recycling to crush concrete.

[00:10:50] But if you compare, you know, whether it's the embodied carbon that's gone into making that slab or, you know, embodied carbon or even just monetary value that's gone into it as an aggregate, the differential there is huge.

[00:11:03] So obviously, if you can reuse it as it is, or even retain as much as possible, then that is preserving that value.

[00:11:15] And generally, that's the kind of thinking that we want to see embodied across the industry much more.

[00:11:22] So we've talked a bit about some of the problems.

[00:11:25] And I think it's, you know, in past episodes on the podcast, I've had, you know, a couple of people on talking about really, really good projects, case studies of sort of material reuse and circular economy in action.

[00:11:36] So I think it's fair to say that, you know, there's kind of examples out there that we know it can work and very exciting to see like more happening around it, even if the percentage is still so low.

[00:11:48] And kind of surprising for me to hear the percentage is still so low, considering how much talk there is around material reuse.

[00:11:55] But do you feel that the industry is sort of changing and moving in the right direction?

[00:12:00] Have you sensed a shift in the last few years?

[00:12:03] Yeah, we definitely sensed a shift in the kind of dialogue around this.

[00:12:08] It's kind of left to the top of the sustainability agenda in terms of kind of professional training, all the conferences and the rest of it, particularly among architects.

[00:12:22] There's a sort of strong thirst to see more materials diverted from waste from a building being deconstructed into another use elsewhere.

[00:12:33] And there's also growing demand to purchase reclaimed components.

[00:12:37] So I think the industry is 100% moving in the right direction.

[00:12:42] Obviously, yeah, I'm slightly pious, but I feel it could move much faster and much further.

[00:12:51] Yeah, and I think our view is that it's inevitable, like even without further legislation pushes.

[00:13:01] We've just seen skyrocketing demand for reclaimed materials across automotive, electronics, textiles.

[00:13:09] It will come to construction.

[00:13:11] It will just be a few years behind the way it typically is or typically has been with other kind of like changes in consumer behavior and technology.

[00:13:23] Yeah, yeah, it is interesting to think about.

[00:13:25] I mean, I often think about the historic examples of circular economy in action and, you know, things like how much.

[00:13:31] I mean, if you go to Rome and you see buildings from the 1700s made of stone that was from Roman times from buildings that had fallen apart, you know.

[00:13:40] So there's these sort of examples that through different periods of history, we sort of did these things because it was necessary.

[00:13:47] And we're getting maybe to another point in history where it starts to make more sense to start sourcing things, you know, from reuse rather than from virgin materials.

[00:13:58] Yeah, absolutely.

[00:13:59] I mean, I think, as I said, it's a bit surprising that in construction the rates are so low when actually, you know, technically it's actually quite a lot of – it's quite feasible for all sorts of components in construction.

[00:14:15] You know, you'd think that, you know, refurbishing an iPad would be much, much more complicated than, you know, taking up a carpet tile and relaying it in a different building.

[00:14:25] And, of course, but there's all sorts of other reasons why it's perhaps a lagging.

[00:14:33] I think the example of Rome or even London is a great one.

[00:14:38] Like, it was historically just incredibly common to reuse whole buildings in all sorts of different buildings.

[00:14:47] I've often thought that'd be like a great diagram of map of all the columns that have wandered around Rome.

[00:14:52] Yes, yeah.

[00:14:54] Did you hear – I'm taking us off on a bit of a tangent here – but did you hear the – did you read the article in The Conversation a couple of months ago, which was about the Edo period in Japan, where they – I think it was in the 1700s for a period of time in Japan.

[00:15:08] They essentially had a fully circular economy within the islands of Japan.

[00:15:13] I'll send it over to you if you haven't seen it.

[00:15:15] It's absolutely fascinating.

[00:15:16] Wow.

[00:15:18] Yeah, that's really interesting.

[00:15:19] I think the Japanese still have very good circular economy programs.

[00:15:26] Like, they co-locate businesses where a business which will make use of the waste from another manufacturing process.

[00:15:35] They always have, like, a very different attitude, I think, to, like, how long they expect buildings to last.

[00:15:41] So a lot of components, including things like kitchens, are very much designed to be replaced.

[00:15:48] Okay.

[00:15:48] Which on one level can sound, like, you know, a bit erroneous, but definitely means that they have, like, much more practice, much more skilled labor in terms of being able –

[00:16:00] understanding how to get quite complex components out of buildings.

[00:16:05] Interesting.

[00:16:05] Interesting.

[00:16:06] Okay, I'll try and take us back on track now, which is to talk about material index.

[00:16:11] So what is that, and what are some of the problems you're trying to solve?

[00:16:15] Yeah, so we're basically a bit of a hybrid between a kind of service provider in the construction space and a technology platform.

[00:16:24] So we have developed a digital software in-house, which allows us to quickly catalogue what's in buildings and give accurate quantities,

[00:16:34] and then assess the environmental analytics on that cataloguing process,

[00:16:40] what kind of embodied carbon is in all the components in a building,

[00:16:44] make decisions on what will happen to those components during the deconstruction phase,

[00:16:47] and then we also offer material brokerage,

[00:16:49] so selling components which come out of buildings, essentially, to a supply chain.

[00:16:55] And, yeah, as I think I mentioned, we're a team of 15,

[00:16:58] and pretty much all come from the construction industry, various parts of it.

[00:17:04] And we typically offer our platform, so under license, to developers and contractors,

[00:17:11] or we can provide the services independently of it.

[00:17:15] So we'll go to sites, do the cataloguing of what's in buildings,

[00:17:18] help the contractors determine what components can be reused,

[00:17:22] and what components can be sold, and then handle the logistics around selling.

[00:17:28] It's a kind of really, we find it a fascinating business for all sorts of reasons.

[00:17:33] It's quite complicated and quite dynamic.

[00:17:36] But for us, it's really about just joining those dots.

[00:17:43] So making someone who's got a building that is about to be deconstructed,

[00:17:50] whether it's a light touch refurbishment of an office space or whole building demolition,

[00:17:55] showing them clearly throughout technology what is in the building, what it's worth,

[00:18:02] and then supporting them on the journey to actually making sure that that is correctly disassembled,

[00:18:07] packaged, put into the back of a van and sold.

[00:18:10] And that's kind of our kind of scope, basically.

[00:18:15] I think you touched on, I guess, maybe a couple of points within the wider industry

[00:18:21] of where you're maybe identified where things are difficult at the moment

[00:18:26] and where you're trying to make them easy.

[00:18:27] So there's identifying what you have that could be good for reuse,

[00:18:33] actually taking it out so it's safe and not damaged,

[00:18:37] and then actually finding somewhere to sell it on to.

[00:18:40] That strikes me as three things that are probably most conventional architects, builders, developers

[00:18:46] aren't very knowledgeable about, I suppose.

[00:18:48] Would that be right to say?

[00:18:50] Yeah, absolutely.

[00:18:52] And that's essentially how we bring down our team.

[00:18:54] We have a sort of auditing team.

[00:18:55] We go into buildings, support people on the contractor side who are doing surveys.

[00:19:02] We have a whole bunch of people who deal with advising project managers,

[00:19:07] QSs, architects, demolition contractors on,

[00:19:11] okay, all those steel beams could be sold to someone over here

[00:19:16] or the steel reuse business.

[00:19:19] But, of course, there's a whole bunch of complexity involved in working out on a cost-benefit,

[00:19:25] you know, rational basis.

[00:19:26] Is that worth it for this project?

[00:19:28] How much carbon do you save?

[00:19:29] How much money do you save?

[00:19:31] And then we have a supply chain team.

[00:19:33] So we have 300 businesses and charity partners that we work with to make sure that these components

[00:19:41] that come out of buildings are rehomed.

[00:19:46] Yeah, it's awesome.

[00:19:47] I mean, when you said originally that there's 15 people in the team, I thought, oh, that's quite big.

[00:19:51] But now I'm thinking about the scale of the retrofit challenge we want to get to, actually.

[00:19:55] It doesn't sound like very many people.

[00:19:57] Yeah, and obviously technology helps with that, particularly with the accurate cataloguing of things.

[00:20:04] And obviously lots of these components aren't visible on your first inspection.

[00:20:08] You know, they're hiding behind ceilings or in basements.

[00:20:13] And we partner with a lot of people.

[00:20:16] So almost a large part of what we do is, you know, find that mechanical electrical engineering expert

[00:20:25] for that particular building system or that furniture reuse expert.

[00:20:30] And I think although sometimes people throw up their hands and say, you know, there's almost no reuse

[00:20:36] and this is a big problem, one of our kind of greatest learnings of being in this space over the last few years

[00:20:44] is actually how much hidden expertise there is.

[00:20:47] You know, there are these fantastic people who have got businesses that take secondary pumps

[00:20:54] or secondary sanitary wear, process it, find buyers, and have a huge amount of very specific

[00:21:01] but very high quality expertise.

[00:21:04] And often it's just about getting them to a site or getting the information to them.

[00:21:10] Yeah, bringing everyone together.

[00:21:11] You're a bit of a, I suppose, a node or a nexus for these various skills to come together.

[00:21:17] Yeah, yeah, we can be.

[00:21:19] And obviously, I think this is true across all sorts of construction projects.

[00:21:25] You know, everyone says it, but it's kind of important to live by it as well,

[00:21:29] which is kind of collaboration is key.

[00:21:30] You know, damaged contractors will often get a bad rep as well for, you know, nutritional images.

[00:21:38] They just want to smash everything up and blow everything up.

[00:21:41] That really isn't the case.

[00:21:42] Like, a lot of them do an incredibly challenging job.

[00:21:45] And there's a lot of quite sophisticated engineering.

[00:21:48] And it's going much more in that direction.

[00:21:50] You know, in London, it's pretty common to do very complicated facade retention.

[00:21:56] Very, very common now to even see structural retention, but replacing the facade, putting extra stories on top.

[00:22:04] And a lot of them have the skills to do more deconstruction as long as they feel the client wants it,

[00:22:13] the client in some cases is now demanding it, and that, of course, there is value at the other end.

[00:22:20] Do you think that it's happening first in London and then spreading out to the rest of the UK?

[00:22:27] Or do you see it happening all over?

[00:22:29] Yeah, that's a good question.

[00:22:30] Our experience is really biased because that's where we have grown up.

[00:22:37] We definitely do quite a lot of projects now in Scotland.

[00:22:41] There's quite a strong kind of cultural awareness of the circular economy up there.

[00:22:46] I think the parliament has passed bills.

[00:22:49] We actually find a lot of really fantastic reclaim businesses in the Midlands and the north of England.

[00:22:55] So land is perhaps a bit cheaper.

[00:22:57] However, also, historically, there was quite a big reclaim industry that in London has perhaps suffered over the last 30 years.

[00:23:07] His land values have gone up and also the whole kind of shape of construction in London has changed.

[00:23:14] Much more internationalized.

[00:23:17] And, yeah, so we definitely find some really fantastic businesses up there.

[00:23:21] And actually, the skills around carefully taking something apart, definitely in the industrial sector.

[00:23:28] So people who take apart large infrastructure projects where they're very used to retaining a lot of the value of the complicated machinery inside.

[00:23:37] We definitely see that in the Midlands.

[00:23:39] That's, yeah.

[00:23:41] That is interesting, yeah.

[00:23:42] And I guess for such a small nation, you know, island nation of the UK, it makes sense that these things are all sort of interconnecting, aren't they?

[00:23:51] Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

[00:23:53] And I guess, I think culturally, actually, there's quite a high regard for kind of heritage.

[00:24:01] Like people really sort of instinctively want to keep old buildings.

[00:24:07] You know, strangely, we actually don't deal that much with architectural salvage.

[00:24:11] So we have done on a project basis.

[00:24:14] Most of what we deal with is really large buildings like shopping centers and office blocks.

[00:24:20] Caging infrastructure would have quite a lot of standardized components in them.

[00:24:26] But there is definitely a kind of like high cultural kind of just like aversion to like seeing things scrapped, seeing things thrown away.

[00:24:38] And the sort of instinctive sense that it's worth keeping if we can.

[00:24:43] And definitely, you know, within the high-end London practices, some really brilliant design practices who are really good at retaining what's already in a building.

[00:24:56] Yeah.

[00:24:57] Probably among the best in the world at that.

[00:24:59] Yeah.

[00:25:00] Yeah.

[00:25:00] Brilliant.

[00:25:01] That's really interesting to hear.

[00:25:02] What would you say is your goal in terms of not only for your organization, but for sort of reuse, you know, in the country as well?

[00:25:13] What would you want to see us aiming for?

[00:25:16] Yeah.

[00:25:16] I think, I mean, everyone loves a kind of like showpiece project where, you know, you're achieving 80% reuse.

[00:25:28] I definitely say like the biggest impact would be actually, we know we can get from 2% to 10% quite easily.

[00:25:36] You know, it's profitable for everyone.

[00:25:38] It's just a case of, you know, speaking to the right people at the right point in the project.

[00:25:44] So, it would be great if some of the things which are happening maybe at the top end of the industry among like, you know, in high-end institutional projects, high-end office projects where they're aiming for pre-air outstanding, were just much more widely dispersed.

[00:25:59] So, it becomes much more of a cultural norm in the industry to do a very thorough audit of the building before you deconstruct it.

[00:26:14] And it's something which I think maybe the UK is at a bit of disadvantage in is actually like the level of record keeping on buildings is quite fragmented and quite poor.

[00:26:28] So, it's surprisingly common for, you know, assets which are worth hundreds of millions.

[00:26:33] For people to really have like no real idea of like what's in them, which sounds quite surprising.

[00:26:40] But just because of the way we do like planning and building control and the rest of it, the information is very fragmented.

[00:26:46] I can imagine.

[00:26:47] I can imagine, yeah.

[00:26:48] I'd be interested to know, are there, you know, do you think legislation and planning policy and building regs and all that stuff is key to ramping that up?

[00:26:57] Do you think that's what is missing to sort of push this further?

[00:27:01] Or one of the things maybe?

[00:27:04] Yeah.

[00:27:05] So, I mean, in London, pre-damation audits have become much more common in particularly in certain boroughs, you know, Westminster and the city where the local authority planning departments are asking for these at planning stage.

[00:27:21] And that's a really good like, you know, catalyst for someone to think about reuse generally.

[00:27:28] And we're also seeing pre-redevelopment audits being asked for on larger projects.

[00:27:32] It's kind of the same process essentially of beginning to understand what's in a building or kind of even a portfolio of buildings.

[00:27:40] I think, you know, seeing that rolled out more generally across the UK, of course, we're very biased, but we think that would be a good thing, not just for us, but for the whole industry to transform.

[00:27:58] Definitely at a kind of really big picture level.

[00:28:01] I think the, you know, not just for reuse, but the whole VAT question on, you know, new buildings versus retrofit and, you know, VAT on secondary materials, you know, that could definitely be looked at.

[00:28:17] I think that would be more of a kind of carrot approach than a stick approach, which probably kind of go down better with the construction industry generally if that was more of a level playing field.

[00:28:31] And then on the demand side, so a lot of that is what I'm talking about there is really dealing with supply, like getting really good quality materials out of buildings, so getting them identified, getting them sold.

[00:28:41] But on the supply side, getting them specified to reuse in buildings, that in many ways has become more complex over the last 20, 30 years with probably rightly, you know, greater, you know, certification requirements on building products.

[00:29:00] And it's definitely possible for reuse components to be certified.

[00:29:07] And we've got, you know, hundreds of years of architectural construction experience of using very old materials.

[00:29:13] Like we know they've got very long lifespans, et cetera.

[00:29:19] But that needs to be tackled very much on a case-by-case basis.

[00:29:23] So there's been lots of work done with steel reuse, lots of work done in certain other areas,

[00:29:32] particularly around certain M&E systems, but a lot more work to be done to make sure that architects and contractors feel confident to specify reclaimed materials.

[00:29:43] Often what happens at the moment is that the buyers of the reclaimed materials actually tend to be much smaller outfits than the buildings which are donating them or the contractors selling them.

[00:29:58] And, you know, we want that to change.

[00:30:03] Let's move on.

[00:30:04] I'd love to hear more about some of your case studies, some of the projects you've been involved in.

[00:30:08] What are, what was the sort of typically, what are you involved in?

[00:30:11] Maybe give us a sense of where these projects are, what they are.

[00:30:16] And yeah, it'd be interesting to know some of the lessons you've learned from that as well.

[00:30:21] Yeah, so we get involved in absolutely all sorts.

[00:30:26] Maybe probably more interesting to speak about the ones where we're not just doing the cataloguing and the managing,

[00:30:32] but also seeing materials come off the sites and resold and reused elsewhere.

[00:30:38] Just done a fantastic project with Related Argent at King's Cross,

[00:30:42] seeing over 20% of materials from a very standard but quite high quality office refit project get successfully resold.

[00:30:56] We have been doing a really interesting project in East London with an old water pumping station.

[00:31:02] I say old, but it's sort of decommissioned in 2012.

[00:31:06] Pretty much no one thought there was much value in the components,

[00:31:09] but actually it was in the tens of thousands of pounds of all sorts of things, pumps and generators and the rest of it,

[00:31:16] which were destined essentially to go to some form of scrap,

[00:31:20] but with the right testing methodologies sold.

[00:31:24] And actually most of that, those components will end up being sold internationally.

[00:31:28] Interestingly, I think there's sometimes a perception that reuse is inherently more local.

[00:31:34] Actually, the research just doesn't bear that out.

[00:31:37] Supply chains are just as international as they are with new materials.

[00:31:43] Yeah, really great project.

[00:31:47] We finished, I don't know, a month ago or so.

[00:31:51] It was on Alcal Street with General Demolition and Arup and HMM,

[00:31:55] some of the kind of big names in the construction world generally,

[00:32:03] where everything from sanitary where to office T-points and the rest of it were all successfully kind of sold,

[00:32:11] but also very carefully disaggregated and correctly labelled and so forth.

[00:32:18] That was also a really satisfying scheme because it was one of the first times where a manufacturer was taking back quite a lot of their components.

[00:32:28] In that case, it was ceiling tiles.

[00:32:29] And we're sort of increasingly talking to manufacturers about them having take-back schemes and being on our database

[00:32:38] so that we can very quickly send them the components.

[00:32:45] Yeah, so it's a big range to kind of answer your question.

[00:32:50] The majority of what we do is office and large-scale retail, so out-of-town kind of retail centres.

[00:32:58] They're transforming a huge amount at the moment, as you'd expect,

[00:33:05] with some of them being completely changed and therefore a huge requirement to find new homes for all sorts of components.

[00:33:15] But we also get involved in very kind of like, you know, sort of dinky little projects,

[00:33:21] you know, gallery space for the Science Museum and the rest of it.

[00:33:25] And there's always a really interesting kind of whole different network of people you're dealing with at that scale.

[00:33:35] Donations to artists, sending cabinets to other museums and the rest of it.

[00:33:41] Interesting. Yeah, to think of the really bespoke projects.

[00:33:45] But I'm very interested in the idea of the offices and supermarkets or large-scale retail being,

[00:33:52] I suppose, what is a large part of your work.

[00:33:56] What is driving that?

[00:33:58] Is that, I mean, I can totally understand the supermarkets, you know,

[00:34:01] large supermarkets going out of business or large shopping centres, you know,

[00:34:05] just not being viable anymore, things like online shopping.

[00:34:10] That's a trend, I guess, that we're seeing across the UK.

[00:34:12] And then in terms of offices, is that just people refurbishing essentially?

[00:34:18] It's whole-scale office transformation on the second point.

[00:34:24] And actually the same with the large retail centres.

[00:34:28] Like they actually at the top end, they're pretty resilient.

[00:34:34] And definitely a lot of these do have further life left in them.

[00:34:37] It's just a case of like reconsolidating the estate, essentially.

[00:34:43] I mean, this isn't my area of expertise, but at the top end of commercial real estate,

[00:34:49] actually demand is quite high.

[00:34:50] So if you are trying to get footfall through your shopping centre or get your office workers in your building,

[00:34:58] then you actually want to make that a really good environment.

[00:35:01] So you're perhaps investing in real estate more than you were before we had the opportunity to shop online or work from home.

[00:35:09] Obviously, there's a huge tail to that.

[00:35:12] And occasionally I drive around a second-tier British city,

[00:35:18] and you see a lot of real estate where you think,

[00:35:20] wow, it's going to be a huge amount of work to bring this up to energy performance.

[00:35:27] And is there going to be demand for it?

[00:35:30] That's not the problem we solve, but we definitely hope that however that problem is solved,

[00:35:37] that material reclamation and material reuse kind of help in those scenarios.

[00:35:45] And what would have been some, I suppose,

[00:35:47] maybe some of the lessons learned over the past couple of years of some of these projects?

[00:35:51] Or what insights have you gained about the wider sector from that?

[00:35:57] It's such a cliche, isn't it?

[00:35:58] I've already said it.

[00:35:59] But definitely collaboration is at the heart of this within our business.

[00:36:02] I mean, we are always proactively trying to kind of make the journey easier for everyone.

[00:36:10] So we're always trying to innovate around faster ways to capture the data,

[00:36:15] better ways of sharing it with design teams and project teams,

[00:36:19] trying to always make the business case much more robust.

[00:36:22] So, okay, can we accurately quantify the additional time and disaggregation?

[00:36:27] Can we accurately give you a really solid secondary price?

[00:36:30] So you see, you know, everyone involved is making the right decision with the right information.

[00:36:36] And then I think maybe one of the lessons is not to come at this problem with too many preconceptions.

[00:36:48] So really spend time, as much time as possible, on site,

[00:36:54] talking to people, doing the hard yards around,

[00:36:58] carefully taking something down and palletizing it

[00:37:00] and the businesses which are taking these materials and reprocessing it.

[00:37:03] But it's very easy to, you know, say,

[00:37:08] oh, we should just be designing in a certain way.

[00:37:11] We should be bolting everything, not welding it.

[00:37:13] But when you really lift the lid on the processes involved,

[00:37:16] all these assumptions are kind of challenged.

[00:37:19] And so, yeah, perhaps just trying to listen to all these individual stakeholders

[00:37:30] who really know what they're talking about

[00:37:32] and try and act in a way where you're just trying to help them do what they're doing,

[00:37:39] rather than perhaps trying to turn up with like a new system

[00:37:43] that is kind of saying, okay, you will now need to do something a completely different way.

[00:37:49] It sounds like one of the challenges for mainstream in scaling up retrofit is quite similar.

[00:37:57] Or not retrofit, sorry.

[00:37:58] Reuse is quite similar to retrofit in the sense that we know it has to go from sort of,

[00:38:03] you know, scaling up hugely over the coming years.

[00:38:08] But every project is unique and you get to the point where there's general principles,

[00:38:13] but ultimately you have to look at every single building individually

[00:38:15] and you'll come with a different approach to each one.

[00:38:20] Yeah, I think that probably is quite a good kind of analogy.

[00:38:23] It's obviously very close because it's kind of,

[00:38:25] it's also the kind of complexity of the real estate industry

[00:38:28] where there's typically loads of stakeholders as well, right?

[00:38:31] Like you're trying to retrofit this big building and there's multiple tenants

[00:38:34] and multiple consultants and maybe it's even a JV development partnership.

[00:38:40] And so it can be easy to kind of get frustrated at the pace of change

[00:38:44] because of the level of coordination involved.

[00:38:50] Our, definitely the sense we get,

[00:38:53] and maybe we're in a slightly more privileged sense of the industry,

[00:38:55] is actually there is huge competence in this industry

[00:39:00] and huge desire to see buildings upgraded

[00:39:03] and to do the right thing around environmental performance.

[00:39:07] And likewise with civil economy to,

[00:39:11] you know, no one really wants to see high quality things sent to landfill

[00:39:17] or even like extremely downgraded

[00:39:20] because, you know, everyone loses essentially

[00:39:23] apart from, you know, a few very large waste collectors.

[00:39:28] But, so there is appetite there.

[00:39:33] And maybe the way to think about it is like not to get too daunted

[00:39:38] by like the huge industry-wide kind of transformation,

[00:39:42] but just every project trying to make it better.

[00:39:45] You know, get from 6% to 10%, get from 10% to 15%,

[00:39:51] rather than maybe like focusing too much on a couple of showpiece projects

[00:39:55] where we try and get from 10% to 80%.

[00:39:57] Yeah, I think that makes sense.

[00:39:59] And I think maybe a good question to ask at this point is what,

[00:40:02] maybe what advice would you have for architects

[00:40:05] or the people that are listening

[00:40:07] who want to get more involved with circular approaches

[00:40:11] or reuse within their projects?

[00:40:14] Well, I'll let you answer that

[00:40:16] because I think it's a good lead on from that last part.

[00:40:19] Yeah, I mean, well, obviously we have a CPD program,

[00:40:23] so I can plug getting in touch with us.

[00:40:27] But there's loads of great kind of guidance actually now emerging in this sector.

[00:40:34] So the UK Green Building Council are doing great work in this area.

[00:40:39] Some leading architectural practices like Duncan Baker-Brown

[00:40:44] and Mark Sparfield Architects are, you know,

[00:40:48] being pretty open with their lessons learned

[00:40:52] from really focusing on projects with a high level of reuse.

[00:40:57] I think maybe engagement with demolished contractors

[00:41:03] and deconstruction contractors and that supply chain

[00:41:05] has historically not been a huge part of the profession,

[00:41:10] of the architectural profession.

[00:41:11] You know, like you wouldn't necessarily turn up

[00:41:13] to that tender interview with a demolition contractor,

[00:41:17] ask those probing questions around,

[00:41:19] okay, what is going to happen to these components

[00:41:21] and can you prove that and so forth.

[00:41:24] I think that's really changing.

[00:41:26] We see a huge appetite in that sector.

[00:41:30] I think, you know, for the construction industry as a whole,

[00:41:33] I mean, the whole sector remains as challenging as ever.

[00:41:35] I think we've seen this with ISG.

[00:41:39] But, you know, I don't think in that sector

[00:41:45] you want to be the last mover in this transformation

[00:41:50] because, I mean, it's going to happen

[00:41:52] sort of almost regardless of the legislation,

[00:41:54] in my opinion.

[00:41:55] You should look at the other industries

[00:41:57] and it will even start to be driven by your supply chain,

[00:42:01] you know, by the manufacturers wanting to get

[00:42:03] that machinery back and so forth.

[00:42:08] So, you know, of course, what they would want

[00:42:11] is more contractual certainty,

[00:42:12] particularly if they can put in place training programs

[00:42:14] and the rest of it.

[00:42:16] But perhaps the first step is just to be kind of open-minded

[00:42:19] about where the industry will go for the next decade.

[00:42:25] Yeah, that's great advice.

[00:42:26] And I think always with anything to do with sustainability,

[00:42:30] my feeling is that it's really important

[00:42:32] to understand the big picture.

[00:42:33] And a lot of the time on this podcast,

[00:42:35] I'm talking about really big picture stuff.

[00:42:37] But I think if we only focus on that,

[00:42:38] we can get a bit,

[00:42:40] feel like we're totally out of control

[00:42:41] in terms of shifting that big picture.

[00:42:43] So I think then like zooming back into

[00:42:45] where is your area of control

[00:42:47] and what can you influence?

[00:42:49] And it might be if you're an architect,

[00:42:50] just your next project that you're working on

[00:42:52] and trying to bring in some of that big picture thinking

[00:42:55] into thinking,

[00:42:56] what does this mean for the next project?

[00:42:57] Can I get from, as you said,

[00:42:58] from 2% to 10% or something in terms of reuse?

[00:43:01] You know, maybe that's your target for your next project.

[00:43:04] And then just moving forward from there.

[00:43:06] So I think collectively,

[00:43:07] if we all started doing that,

[00:43:09] it would make a difference, wouldn't it?

[00:43:12] Yeah, absolutely.

[00:43:13] Absolutely.

[00:43:14] And of course, I'm not talking about

[00:43:16] percentages retained here,

[00:43:17] which is obviously like,

[00:43:19] it's fantastic if you're just retaining a huge amount

[00:43:21] of the building often.

[00:43:24] But I've sort of taken that as a given.

[00:43:27] Yeah, I think it's another,

[00:43:30] sort of in danger of just straying into endless truisms.

[00:43:33] But yeah, we've all got a part to play

[00:43:36] and every project can be better than the last.

[00:43:41] Yeah.

[00:43:43] I guess one,

[00:43:45] yeah, I mean,

[00:43:46] just another learning is,

[00:43:49] you know,

[00:43:50] making these decisions with the right evidence base

[00:43:54] will carry you much further typically

[00:43:58] in those discussions with a client or with QS.

[00:44:03] We can help provide that evidence

[00:44:04] or point people in the right direction.

[00:44:06] Yeah.

[00:44:07] And you're talking evidence-based

[00:44:09] just in terms of what you have already,

[00:44:11] that cataloging part?

[00:44:12] Yeah.

[00:44:13] And like,

[00:44:13] what is the embodied carbon locked up in those materials?

[00:44:16] What,

[00:44:17] you know,

[00:44:18] what would be the processes involved in,

[00:44:20] you know,

[00:44:21] retaining them or bring them up to scratch?

[00:44:24] You know,

[00:44:26] if you are going to go through the process of,

[00:44:28] you know,

[00:44:29] trying to mandate some reuse percentages

[00:44:31] in a tender document,

[00:44:33] just really understanding

[00:44:35] the steps involved

[00:44:36] and would that have an impact on program cost

[00:44:39] or whatever it is?

[00:44:41] Because there's a lot of assumptions made

[00:44:42] where,

[00:44:44] you know,

[00:44:45] you might ask a project manager

[00:44:46] and they might say,

[00:44:47] oh,

[00:44:47] that sounds complicated.

[00:44:49] But,

[00:44:50] you know,

[00:44:50] with the right case studies,

[00:44:51] the right evidence,

[00:44:52] it's easier to make that case,

[00:44:54] right?

[00:44:55] Yeah.

[00:44:55] Yeah,

[00:44:56] for sure.

[00:44:56] I mean,

[00:44:56] that makes perfect sense.

[00:44:59] Before we start to wrap up,

[00:45:01] there was a question I did think of a while ago.

[00:45:03] I was trying to find the time to slip it in.

[00:45:05] So I'll just put it in here as the last question,

[00:45:06] which is,

[00:45:08] what

[00:45:11] international examples

[00:45:12] or what countries or cities

[00:45:13] do you think are actually doing very well on this

[00:45:16] that we might learn from?

[00:45:18] Yeah,

[00:45:19] it's a great question.

[00:45:21] I'm suddenly feeling very pro-kill.

[00:45:26] I mean,

[00:45:27] it's a very different model

[00:45:29] and,

[00:45:32] you know,

[00:45:32] I'm always a bit wary of kind of giving like,

[00:45:35] you know,

[00:45:36] really,

[00:45:36] really fantastic kind of showcases

[00:45:37] because everyone works in their own context.

[00:45:40] But,

[00:45:41] I mean,

[00:45:41] the work of Landanga in Copenhagen

[00:45:43] is really interesting.

[00:45:44] So that's an architectural practice

[00:45:45] that was doing everything from

[00:45:49] actively looking for buildings

[00:45:50] being deconstructed in Copenhagen,

[00:45:53] actually providing additional services.

[00:45:55] They had a storage business,

[00:45:56] they had a material reprocessing business,

[00:45:58] both of which they've now spun out,

[00:45:59] I understand,

[00:46:01] and really designing

[00:46:02] details around,

[00:46:05] architectural design details

[00:46:06] around,

[00:46:07] you know,

[00:46:07] what you could do with

[00:46:08] secondary materials

[00:46:09] coming out of the building.

[00:46:11] I think in terms of like,

[00:46:15] sort of like whole ecosystems

[00:46:17] where you're really seeing

[00:46:18] a number of businesses spring up

[00:46:21] dealing with

[00:46:23] secondary supply chains.

[00:46:24] Secondary is the word I'm using

[00:46:26] basically to mean reclaimed materials.

[00:46:29] I think France is really interesting

[00:46:30] at the moment.

[00:46:31] They,

[00:46:33] people might be familiar with like

[00:46:34] platforms like Backmarket,

[00:46:36] which is French originally,

[00:46:37] but there's a lot of interesting

[00:46:42] sort of platforms and businesses

[00:46:44] in France around this.

[00:46:47] Material reuse in the construction sector,

[00:46:51] kind of mandatory levels of reuse

[00:46:52] on public buildings,

[00:46:56] environmental taxes

[00:46:57] on the amount of waste you produce

[00:46:59] as a manufacturer and so forth,

[00:47:02] product return systems being mandated.

[00:47:06] I think there's sort of question marks

[00:47:07] on how well that translates,

[00:47:08] particularly to a UK context.

[00:47:13] I think there's

[00:47:16] very strong interest in this area

[00:47:18] in America.

[00:47:20] So some really fantastic work

[00:47:22] going on at Cornell University

[00:47:23] in upstate New York,

[00:47:25] Pacific Northwest,

[00:47:27] California.

[00:47:30] and it will be

[00:47:32] really interesting to see

[00:47:34] kind of

[00:47:36] how they begin to scale that

[00:47:38] over there.

[00:47:40] And I guess the UK

[00:47:41] will typically adopt

[00:47:43] some things from America

[00:47:44] and some things from Europe

[00:47:45] and also kind of

[00:47:48] develop specialisms

[00:47:50] of its own.

[00:47:52] We have an incredibly deep

[00:47:54] talent pool

[00:47:55] in,

[00:47:57] you know,

[00:47:58] construction engineering

[00:47:59] and design

[00:48:01] in London.

[00:48:02] And although maybe

[00:48:03] we're a bit slow

[00:48:04] off the blocks

[00:48:05] in this area,

[00:48:06] I think

[00:48:06] it's actually picking up

[00:48:08] pace very,

[00:48:08] very fast.

[00:48:10] Great,

[00:48:10] great.

[00:48:11] I think lots of

[00:48:12] good examples

[00:48:13] to follow up on there

[00:48:14] and the other one

[00:48:14] that I thought of

[00:48:15] was Amsterdam

[00:48:16] as being a sort of

[00:48:17] city level

[00:48:18] that is really

[00:48:19] pushing this.

[00:48:21] Yeah,

[00:48:21] yeah.

[00:48:21] I think

[00:48:23] maybe a lot of

[00:48:24] that work

[00:48:24] might be on

[00:48:26] Metabolics.

[00:48:27] I think that's

[00:48:27] the company involved

[00:48:28] in finding

[00:48:28] guidance

[00:48:29] to people who are

[00:48:30] interested.

[00:48:30] They might be able

[00:48:30] to find it

[00:48:32] on their website.

[00:48:33] Excellent,

[00:48:33] excellent.

[00:48:34] And lots of

[00:48:34] ideas for me

[00:48:35] for future episodes

[00:48:37] to try and find

[00:48:37] other guests

[00:48:38] to come on

[00:48:38] and talk about

[00:48:39] these things.

[00:48:41] Yeah,

[00:48:42] yeah,

[00:48:42] yeah.

[00:48:42] I'd actually,

[00:48:43] I'd love to know

[00:48:44] more about what

[00:48:44] they're doing.

[00:48:46] I just know

[00:48:46] there's,

[00:48:48] yeah,

[00:48:48] I mean,

[00:48:48] that's very much

[00:48:49] led by a local

[00:48:51] authority,

[00:48:51] essentially,

[00:48:52] isn't it?

[00:48:54] And,

[00:48:56] yeah,

[00:48:56] I think what's

[00:48:57] quite interesting

[00:48:57] there is that

[00:48:57] cities go through

[00:48:59] really big peaks

[00:49:00] and troughs

[00:49:01] and just the amount

[00:49:02] of construction

[00:49:02] activity they're

[00:49:03] going through.

[00:49:03] Amsterdam has

[00:49:04] been going

[00:49:04] through a huge

[00:49:04] amount of change

[00:49:05] over the last

[00:49:05] few years.

[00:49:08] And,

[00:49:10] so definitely

[00:49:10] putting in that

[00:49:11] kind of citywide

[00:49:13] strategic infrastructure

[00:49:14] to allow for that

[00:49:15] I think is really

[00:49:16] interesting.

[00:49:18] Any final thoughts

[00:49:20] or closing

[00:49:22] words of wisdom

[00:49:23] before we finish

[00:49:24] up?

[00:49:26] Hopefully,

[00:49:27] people start to

[00:49:28] just look

[00:49:29] at buildings

[00:49:30] differently,

[00:49:31] begin to see them

[00:49:32] as,

[00:49:32] you know,

[00:49:34] repositories of

[00:49:35] value,

[00:49:37] and start to think

[00:49:38] much more

[00:49:38] imaginatively about

[00:49:40] how to unlock

[00:49:41] that value,

[00:49:41] how to reuse

[00:49:42] those components.

[00:49:44] And,

[00:49:45] yeah,

[00:49:45] of course,

[00:49:46] just get in touch

[00:49:47] if you'd like to know

[00:49:48] more.

[00:49:54] I hope you enjoyed

[00:49:56] that episode

[00:49:56] and you've been

[00:49:57] learning a lot

[00:49:57] from the Green

[00:49:58] Urbanist podcast.

[00:49:59] If you're at the

[00:50:00] start of your

[00:50:00] sustainability journey

[00:50:01] and you want to

[00:50:02] kickstart your

[00:50:03] learning and

[00:50:03] figure out how

[00:50:04] to take climate

[00:50:04] action in your

[00:50:05] work,

[00:50:06] I definitely

[00:50:06] recommend checking

[00:50:07] out my online

[00:50:08] course,

[00:50:09] which is called

[00:50:10] Sustainability

[00:50:11] Essentials for

[00:50:12] Built Environment

[00:50:13] Professionals.

[00:50:14] It's a self-paced

[00:50:15] online course

[00:50:16] with video lessons

[00:50:17] and advice for

[00:50:18] integrating

[00:50:19] sustainability into

[00:50:20] your work.

[00:50:21] The link to the

[00:50:22] course is in the

[00:50:23] episode description.

[00:50:23] Do check it out

[00:50:24] and consider enrolling.