EU and Nordic countries are actively promoting the uptake of a circular economy with the expectation that a circular economy contributes to a regenerative growth model that lowers environmental impacts of carbon emissions, resource use, and land use while providing jobs and economic activity (EC, 2020 & Finnish Government, 2021).
The construction sector is throughout its entire value chain – from extraction, manufacturing, transport, and construction to end of life – responsible for half of all raw material extraction, 40% of energy use, 35% of CO2 -emissions and 25-30% of all waste produced (One planet network, 2020). A circular transformation offers a pathway to lower carbon emissions and resource use of the sector while limiting the negative environmental impact of construction and demolition waste.
Monitoring the circular performance is critical to accelerating the progress towards a circular construction sector. It can deliver knowledge of challenges, inform how far the Nordic countries are from realising specific circularity targets, and strengthen initiatives. Nevertheless, monitoring the circular transformation of the construction sector is currently dispersed. Moreover, the national Nordic circular economy strategies and monitoring frameworks in the construction sector are diverse in substance and scope (Castell-Rüdenhausen et al., 2021).
The challenge of measuring the circular economy has received much attention in recent years. Various methods have generated indicators and metrics for circular economy strategies beyond reuse, recycling, and recovery. The recognised 10R framework expands the EU waste hierarchy and introduces ten circular strategies within the circular economy umbrella term (EEA 2021).
Refuse (R0)
Rethink (R1)
Reduce (R2)
Reuse (R3)
Repair (R4)
Refurbish (R5)
Remanufacture (R6)
Repurpose (R7)
Recycling (R8)
Recover energy (R9).
Especially the first eight (R0 – R7) strategies can contribute significantly to making the EU more circular, but our study indicates that research, monitoring, and policy targets are currently focusing mainly on R8 and R9. The need for better monitoring of circular construction is widely accepted, but it is not clear how to establish feasible monitoring frameworks that cover the most promising circular strategies. Hence, the project is aiming to respond to three guiding questions.
What should ideally be monitored in terms of circular construction,
What do stakeholders find it important to monitor, and
What can realistically be monitored across the Nordics.
The project design, illustrated in Figure 1, reflects the guiding questions: