Reusing and recycling timber for a circular construction With a budget of circa 20 million euros and 30 partners, SirkTRE is one of Norway’s biggest R&D projects of its kind. It is managed by Omtre AS and counts 6 work packages. Ola Rostad is the leader for task SirkGLOBAL, the work package which is responsible for networking and outreach internationally. Annually, in Norway, 3 million cubic metres of timber get incinerated which could have served society in multiple ways, including in new and renovation construction projects. This incineration generates greenhouse gases that could have been stored longer. In 2022, SIVA (Industrial Development Corporation of Norway), Innovation Norway and the Research Council of Norway co-funded SirkTRE, a project initiated by the Norwegian Wood Cluster which aims to spearhead the circularity transition of the timber building industry and relevant stakeholders and partners. The SirkTRE project has identified that when a wooden building is demolished and the materials are disposed of, or incinerated, this represents a missed opportunity for harvesting valuable resources and it negatively impacts sustainability goals by creating waste and releasing CO2. Alarmingly, the disposal of traditional construction materials at the end of their lifecycle contributes to 25% of all waste in Norway. The project team proposes an alternative approach, which is to dismantle buildings and structures carefully and methodically, piece by piece so that those valuable wood materials can be reused and processed to be new products used in further construction projects. This simple but effective premise will have enormous implications if rolled out as a sustainable model for the industry. “The climate issue is one of the biggest driving forces for this project. We need to use resources in a smarter way in the future. This project is about reinventing how this is done. The normal way of using wood is that you use it once and then you burn it, and you release the carbon dioxide but if you can reuse the wood, the carbon can stay in the wood for a much longer time,” said Rostad.
Agreement, which aims to limit global warming to 1.5°C by the end of the century. This 8% implies a reduction of 10,000 tonnes of CO2 equivalents by 2030 made possible because as long as the wood remains intact, it will continue to store carbon.
Beyond environmental assessments and compiling data for Environmental Product Declarations (EPD), in a more practical push,
“The construction industry makes up for one-third of the
carbon footprint in the world, so this is a big idea.” Digital twins to facilitate for reuse. The project looks into the emerging technologies and markets, but also in the business models of the different products and services.
Big strides with smaller footprints SirkTRE’s ambition is to turn half of today’s wood waste into building products by 2030. If successful, the carbon footprint will be reduced to a level that represents 8% of Norway’s commitments in the Paris
www.euresearcher.com
Happy project managers together with Minister of Trade and Industry are posing in front of a heap of wood waste, lost potential. Photo: Sigurd Fløistad/NIBIO
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