Closing Material Cycles in Cities

Resource consumption in the building sector accounts for 35-45 percent of global material flows. Therefore, there is a special responsibility here to keep materials in circulation, e.g. through recycling, thereby conserving raw materials and at the same time contributing to climate protection. 

This requires joint efforts by all those who can influence these material flows - from the investor and builder of the individual building to those responsible for waste management, the waste and building materials industry. However, there is often still a lack of information about which materials are used in buildings and infrastructures and in what quantities. 

Here, the IOER is working, among other things, on material registers for different regions that record and identify material storage. In addition, the dynamics of the building stock are being researched with so-called material flow analyses. Last but not least, the understanding of settlement structures and process chains serves technical and social innovations, the identification of relevant actors and the description of new business models in the entire development cycle of the built environment.

Georg Schiller
Georg Zinder
Karin Gruhler