Material Index greatly increases reuse rates through its business-to-business material marketplace. This marketplace connects together sites using the MI auditing app (a combination of designers, developers and contractors) and specialist reclamation and refurbishment businesses, as well as closed loop recycling partners and manufacturers with take back schemes.

The marketplace is supported by a material exchange team that supports logistics, brokering and storage.

Currently over 300 businesses are purchasers of reclaimed and refurbished materials through MI, including reclamation businesses, fit-out contractors, main contractors, manufactures, building owners and developers.

Demolition is estimated to generate around of waste per square metre. By increasing reuse rates from the industry average of 4% to 19%, Material Index reduces waste by approximately 15% – equivalent to 211 kg less waste per square metre.

Material Index (MI) greatly increases the reuse rate through its fast, collaborative digital pre-demolition audit tool. The digital audit tool meets BREEAM, GLA, Westminster and City of London compliance, and critically creates an accurate, collaborative register of materials to transfer to storage, or exchange. Assets are captured on-site using the MI app, which records data at a component level. Each asset is categorised by BCIS building layer and Uniclass, with supporting fields including name, condition, manufacturer, material (mapped to EWC), dimensions, and additional metadata. AI Audit functionality now accelerates the capture process further. All members of the project team can log-in, contribute, and review the data and decisions being made. Data from MI’s tool connected to a marketplace exchange platform to connect contractors and developers to over 300 businesses to enable reuse of materials.

A wide range of solutions exist which can facilitate the creation, storage, and use of materials passports, making it easier for manufacturers, designers, and owners to store and reference valuable information about the composition of their products and buildings. Many of these solutions can help collect key product and sustainability information including data from EPDs, health and wellbeing information, circularity metrics, and more. Additionally, materials passports can include information related to the manufacture, testing, and warranty of products to enable better due diligence and improve insurability.

These solutions can facilitate the creation of materials passports at a variety of levels from individual materials and products to wider building systems. Many also provide some level of interoperability with other digital tools like BIM, LCA calculators, digital twins, or digital reuse hubs. By utilising these solutions, valuable information can be better collected and utilised across the built environment supply chain to encourage more sustainable and circular decisions in the future.

The End Cat A campaign is a group of people working in the built environment sector striving to end waste from office fitouts. The campaign includes designers, architects, contractors, developers, recyclers and more united by a belief that Cat A fit-outs are anachronistic. The campaign works to reduce waste from Cat A fit-outs via a number of methods. They share examples of best practice and can provide contacts to the growing number of companies who recondition used lights, test, and warranty them. They also give information on the thousands of new and nearly-new commercial luminaires that are available for free on reuse websites. Additionally, the End Cat A campaign shares details of clearance firms which re-home used lights. Their role is to bring attention to the issue to increase the implementation of practical solutions.Ìý

Leading developers are already adopting best practices to reduce waste from Cat A fit-outs. By installing only sample floors, they can significantly reduce the number of luminaires installed before tenants move in. Another option is to design architectural lighting and ceilings for retention by making the installations more considered and creative. Designing the electrical infrastructure to easily facilitate modification would also enhance retention.ÌýÌý

Anyone interested can join End Cat A or sign their pledge to show their commitment to ending Cat A waste. By giving inspiration and advice, the End Cat A campaign is working to ensure that no luminaire ends up in a skip.Ìý

Circular Passports®

Upcyclea® has already developed nearly 10,000 passports for a variety of materials and products. Information about their composition, recycled and bio-based content, reuse potential, and LCA is input directly from the manufacturers via free access to the platform.

Pictograms are used to allow for material data to be easily compared across products, and all information is qualified and rated by Upcyclea’s experts. Proven third-party information is highlighted with coloured pictograms and self-declared data is greyed out. Project or facilities management teams can also use the Upcyclea platform to create specific passports based on existing materials where no manufacturer data is available.

Circular Signature®

By integrating the data from multiple Circular Passports®, Upcyclea® can create a Circular Signature® for a given building. This signature can measure the degree of circularity, embodied CO2 footprint, material health values, as well as the residual economic value of a building which can be determined using the its products and materials based on recycling or reuse marketplace prices within the UK. This allows for detailed insights to be recorded at both the project and portfolio levels and allows project teams to set targets as well as manage and monitor in real time based on any changes to project materiality.

Digital Bank of Materials

When applied to a large building portfolio, the data aggregated by Upcyclea® can be used to develop a digital bank of materials, in line with the EU’s Buildings as Material Banks initiative. This allows for local authorities, developers, and property managers to more fully understand the resources contained within their buildings to better facilitate their eventual reuse. With detailed information regarding the quantity and quality of products and materials, sustainable deconstructions can be adequately prepared for, long-term economic value can be managed, and waste can be avoided. The platform also allows for existing buildings to be effectively deconstructed by allowing existing materials to be uploaded directly from pre-demolition or pre-refurbishment audits.

Reuse Library

It is essential that viable marketplaces for the trade and transfer of materials exist in order to spur reuse and Upcyclea® also features a robust reuse search engine, Noah which can help to correlate the supply of materials available for reuse with demand. When deconstructions alone cannot fulfil this demand, in-situ products can be sourced from alternative marketplaces, material depots, and other resource partners. Upcyclea have also developed the UK specific platform ROMULUS for driving large scale reuse among public and private organisations.

The HTS Stockmatcher is a free web-based selection tool for the procurement of reclaimed steel for use in new construction projects.

The system compares two lists of information: a list of reclaimed steel, and a list of design steel. It finds where design elements may be substituted with reclaimed elements. The matching process considers geometric and simple structural properties, along with the waste produced through offcuts and over-specification. The Stockmatcher reviews all suitable substitutions and returns the most efficient matches. The hope is that it will facilitate the wider adoption of reused steel, accelerating practical application of circular economy principles and help to reduce the industry’s significant carbon footprint.

The tool is free to use.

Madaster is an online platform that enables the registration, documentation, and exchange of material data related to buildings and infrastructure and collates information to create material passports. Materials, components, and products are provided with an identity, transforming them into a valuable resource that enables reuse and promotes the sustainable management of our built environment. In addition, by leveraging the large amounts of data connected to each building or infrastructure object, Madaster can produce a wide range of environmental and financial insights including circularity, detachability, whole life carbon, toxicity, and residual value.

Users input a BIM/IFC file or an Excel sheet of asset data into the platform. The platform then enriches this data by matching the materials and products in the asset with data from one of Madaster’s many connected databases. These include EPD information that provides a range of environmental insights. From there the platform has several outputs and dashboarding functionalities that include whole life carbon, circularity index score, detachability information, and a mass and material overview. This information can be exported as a material or product passport, and these can be produced in a range of details and scales. This information can also be formatted to meet various regulations and reports depending on the requirements in each region.

Madaster has been developed to manage large quantities of data from a range of sources whilst still being fully auditable. All the information used and provided by the platform can be tracked and referenced. This increases and encourages transparency and verification.

Manufacturers, design and construction teams, developers, and asset owners can all make more informed decisions using Madaster as a centralised, easily accessible and trusted source of information.

Madaster are currently focused on identifying ‘’, organisations that believe in what Madaster is trying to achieve and want to be at the forefront of implementing circularity and materials passports in the built environment by committing to a 2-year programme of collaboration. Full subscription-based licences will be available from mid-2024

Strocks are moulded clay blocks made from clay and straw. They are made either with our own clay or with clay extracted at site and transported to us and then back to site. The clay is dried but not fired, a massive energy/emissions saving.

Clay blocks can be used like bricks in most ways except as an outer leaf. They are load bearing, fire proof and sound attenuating. For users looking to reduce waste from site they are a good way to turn excavated material into useful products on site. They can be used with most other building systems, tied to other structures, loaded with floors and roofs, fixed with insulation materials and services. They can be plastered, ideally with clay plasters which are also vapour permeable, low emission and re-usable.

They can be used in public or residential settings where they perform the dual functions of improving air quality through humidity control which is innate to unfired clay and they sequester VOCs.

Costs vary depending on the scale of the contract but blocks typically start at £1.80 per block and rise from there depending on the clay used, difficulty of processing and transport.

Walls are typically a fairly low cost in building contracts, percentages vary, but on a typical recent project the savings in land fill tax were three times the cost of the blocks produced from site ‘waste’.

Clay blocks are fully recyclable/reusable and have no end of life.

Maintenance over time may include re-finishing with sodium silicate, linseed oil or similar, or re-plastering or painting with clay paint as with all or any brick or block wall.

Material reuse is a recognised method of tackling waste and carbon emissions, so many locations have a number of independently operating online and offline platforms to facilitate material exchange. These might be operated by private or public sector organisations and operate using a variety of business models. This is not ideal from a user perspective as the required materials are likely dispersed over the platforms, making discovering and acquiring the necessary items difficult, requiring multiple accounts or searches. The Material Reuse Portal is a proof-of-concept platform that uses an ‘aggregator’ approach to simplify the process of finding new materials for projects. In addition, users can find places to list their own materials after deconstruction as well as finding best practice and service providers that might support the reuse journey. Due to the approach used, the Portal can be developed over time to include new material data sources when they become available. It is also set up to be adapted for different locations using the same underlying architecture.

Data is collected that can indicate material ‘demand’, based on the search terms used and how the site is navigated, meanwhile data on ‘supply’ of materials, based on the number of items listed across platforms is also recorded.

The Material Reuse Portal is free to use.

Globechain is an ESG Reuse marketplace connecting corporations from the construction, real estate, retail, hospitality, and medical sectors with nonprofits, small businesses, and individuals. By redistributing unneeded items, Globechain helps reduce waste through reuse and generates ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance) and carbon scope 3 deferred data for its members. Reusing items prolongs their life and eliminates the need for them to be sent to landfill or incinerated, thereby reducing carbon emissions.

Globechain provides a circular and digital solution to waste, with an audit trail that ensures transparency, accountability, and ethical transactions across its product offerings. Its product solutions are external and internal reuse and loaning. Enterprises can reuse and optimise their stock across locations, stores, distribution centres or offices through internal reuse and loaning. External reuse gives enterprises access to its global network of members to redistribute their items.

Globechain’s bespoke reports include kilos diverted and societal impacts such as upskilling. All solutions generate ESG and carbon deferred data, which can be used for IPO, credit financing, tax offsets, sustainability reporting, BREEAM points and helping win tenders.