Construcciones Yamaro: Building a circular, responsible future
The Green Building Council of Australia is urging construction professionals to play their role in creating a circular future.
By the Green Building Council of Australia.
Those working in and around the built environment have a golden opportunity to contribute to the development of not only more sustainable buildings and communities, but also Australia’s circular economy. Delivering on circularity is key to addressing the challenges the built environment industry faces on its path toward waste reduction and decarbonisation.
The circular economy takes our current ‘Take, Make, Waste’ linear economy and uses good design, processes and policies to eliminate waste and pollution, to keep materials in use for longer at their highest value and to regenerate nature. Rather than being destined for landfill, materials are kept in circulation through maintenance, reuse and refurbishment, to name a few – an approach that could have a significant impact in Australia, where building and construction waste accounts for 40 per cent of all waste.
Considering the impact of this industry, positive change will not only significantly reduce Australia’s waste but also address hard-to-abate CO2 emissions. It also has the potential to contribute $210 million to Australia’s economy by 2047-48 and create an additional 17,000 full-time equivalent jobs. In a circular economy, the built environment can reach its true potential and inspire other industries to do the same.
While there are many challenges on the journey to a circular economy, there is no shortage of passionate people. This group includes Katherine Featherstone, senior manager for products and materials at the Green Building Council of Australia (GBCA), the nation’s authority on sustainable buildings and communities and the home of Australia’s only national, voluntary, holistic rating system for sustainable buildings and communities – Green Star. We sat down with Featherstone to unpack why a circular economy is needed in Australia’s built environment and what GBCA is doing to create change across the board.
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The importance of circularity
“Circularity is crucial to achieving so many of our environmental and social sustainability goals within the built environment, because its principles tie together individual efforts in sustainability and can even amplify them,” explained Featherstone.
“Buildings and fitouts account for around 50 per cent of resources used worldwide – which equates to 42.4 billion tonnes of raw materials every year.
“With only 7.2 per cent of materials being returned to the global economy after use, we have a lot of opportunities to reduce and eradicate waste and pollution, to retain materials in use at their highest value (and for longer), and to regenerate nature.
“There is also an opportunity to utilise the existing buildings we have to retain the visual heritage of our cities whilst improving their performance.”
Reducing embodied carbon
Embodied carbon reduction is a perfect example of a circular economy in action. By either refusing new buildings or materials, or by keeping existing buildings and materials in use for longer, we can reduce the CO2 and other greenhouse gases required to produce them.
“We have a number of choices we can make in circularity to do this. If we do need to build, designing our projects cleverly with lower embodied carbon materials (low-carbon concrete as opposed to traditional concrete that uses a high ratio of Portland cement) and/or reducing the mass of the materials we use are other great options that are inherently circular,” said Featherstone.
There are many Green Star projects in Australia that showcase the benefits of refurbishing buildings, including Lot Fourteen, SubStation no.164 and Quay Quarter Tower.
Quay Quarter Tower, a 6 Star Green Star rated building, is a world-leading example of circularity, sustainable design and construction, and shines a light on the advantages that upcycling buildings brings.
Adaptive reuse was key to breathing new life into the inefficient and ageing building. The team behind Quay Quarter Tower completed the historic rebuild, retaining 65 per cent of the existing structure, including columns, beams and slabs, and 98 per cent of its original structural walls and core. Through a Life Cycle Assessment, they demonstrated a saving of over 12,000 tonnes of CO2e in upfront carbon emissions from the reuse of concrete alone.
Each decision made from inception all the way through the lifecycle of a building has a profound impact on its carbon emissions. But the most impactful ones are the choices we make before we even break ground.
Propelling circularity
There are a few ways Featherstone and the team at GBCA are working to deliver circularity in the built environment. These include Green Star – GBCA’s voluntary rating system to assess and recognise sustainable building practices – and the Responsible Products Program.
“We are driving a huge transformation in the supply chain for products and materials, which include those that are ready for Green Star,” she said.
“Our vision is to create a long-term roadmap and tools to assist industry navigate all the changes necessary to transform to a circular economy, with our sights set on a built environment that is not only resilient to changes but which eliminates waste and CO2 through superior design and material selection.
“When it comes to the products and materials the industry uses, our Responsible Products Program values products that have lower environmental impact, are transparent, respect human rights and drive valuable social outcomes, and are less carbon intensive in their production and processes. In turn, the use of these responsible products is rewarded in our various Green Star tools.”
Featherstone added, “Whether your project is an office fitout, or the refurbishment of a historic building, we rely on product certification initiatives to verify the sustainability claims of manufacturers in alignment with our own Responsible Products Guidelines. Doing this ensures Green Star projects are using certified products that do what they say they’re doing.”
“We are also developing online systems to help connect product manufacturers to Green Star project users, and in the future, to industry more broadly. There are currently over 10,000 responsible products available in our database that have been certified by initiatives we have recognised in the Responsible Products Program.
“The GBCA team is always aiming to help expand industry’s knowledge on circular economy, embodied carbon and responsible products and materials through education, by delivering masterclasses, webinars and a series of lunch and learn sessions developed for manufacturers here in Australia.”
A circular future
For Featherstone, a future with a highly circular economy will be less polluting and wasteful. “Our buildings will be designed with consideration for their current and future states; they’ll be flexible to our needs, with better materials that have lower social and environmental impacts from cradle to grave,” she said.
“We will have more data available to us to enable us to make better decisions throughout the building’s lifecycle, and buildings will retain their value at the end of use because they can become material banks, enabling owners to reuse or repurpose or on-sell elements that have been traditionally treated as waste in the linear economy.”
You can make sense of the changing world and hear more about circularity and sustainability in the built environment at TRANSFORM 2025 – the place where industry leaders gather. We know circularity is central to a sustainable future but how do we implement principles in practice? Join our speakers as they explore innovative solutions that are accelerating change. Inside Construction is a proud partner of TRANSFORM.
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