On Thursday, April 18, BUILD UP hosted the first webinar part of a series of six webinars, organised by CircularB. During the event, named ‘CircularB Stakeholder Webinar – Academia and Research’, project experts delved into the common circularity framework that CIRCULARB is developing to support decision-making and assess the implementation level of the European Circular Economy Action Plan (ECEAP) in buildings.

The webinar was structured into four sessions. It started with an introduction to the project made by Luís Bragança, Professor at the University of Minho, and Rand Askar, Research Operation Manager for CircularB Action. ‘COST is an EU programme that provides networking opportunities for researchers and innovators to strengthen Europe’s capacity to address scientific, technological, and societal challenges’, Bragança pointed out. The aim of the project has been complimented by more details on the methodology and framework. ‘Our achievements up to date also include the publication of a book, Creating a Roadmap Towards Circularity in the Build Environment, as well as the development of an e-learning platform which will host courses, webinars and didactic material’.

The third session focused on the valorisation of earthquake waste in supporting the built environment to transition toward circular economy. Mustafa Şahmaran, Professor at Hacettepe University, pointed out that ‘the scope of the project was to collect and separate construction and demolition waste (CDWs) brought by earthquake. The CDWs have been then used to develop a Lego-type system of environmentally friendly structural components. These components will be used for low-cost housing’. The aim is to provide innovative, cost-effective, circular, and smart solutions to the construction sector.

Sustainability and circularity assessment tool

The webinar ended with a final session, where Teresa Ros Dosdá, Senior Researcher at the Instituto de Tecnología Cerámica (ITC), explained: ‘The tool that we are developing is a guidance tool, intended to support non-expert actors in the construction value chain, in a twofold way: to implement sustainability and circularity criteria, as well as to prevent and mitigate negative impacts that might happen’.