Firstly, could you tell us a bit about the background to this report and your role in producing it?

The excellent JRC report on construction and demolition waste (CDW) has been produced in the context of a review clause in the Waste Framework Directive that requires the Commission to consider the feasibility of setting ‘preparing for re-use’ and recycling targets for CDW. It therefore provides the Commission with important background information and insights into the current practices and technologies in the CDW area, and the techno-economic and environmental impacts of CDW management. This recent report follows an earlier JRC study on the issue.

I am coordinating DG Environment’s work on CDW, and I am therefore closely following the research done by the JRC. I therefore provided comments to previous versions of the report and remained in close contact with the authors throughout the project.

The report confirms the crucial role of circularity in reaching climate neutrality. Why is the circular economy so important to this?

The key reason for the enormous potential of circularity to mitigate climate change is that construction products require lots of resources, including energy, to be extracted and produced. Re-used products and recycled construction materials in principle have much lower resource requirements and therefore a lower environmental footprint.

Circularity by definition requires a lifecycle approach. This is why it is crucial to already think about the end-of-life during the design stage of any project related to the built environment. This will then reduce waste and carbon emissions in the first place and enable better collection, sorting and recycling of CDW thereby again reducing carbon emissions.

In this context, can you explain why our approach to Construction and Demolition Waste (CDW) is key to achieving EU climate ambitions?

Indeed, CDW represents almost 40 % of all waste generated in the EU. The report demonstrates that circularity in the built environment is indispensable to reach climate neutrality. It estimates that if we were to prepare for re-use and recycle CDW in line with available practices/technology, we could save an additional 33-52 Mt of greenhouse gas emissions every year. For example, this is more than the annual emissions from Estonia, Latvia and Luxembourg combined!

The report mentions the use of Level(s) to integrate Life Cycle Assessment into public procurement and EU sustainable finance. How do you see the role of Level(s) in this context?

Level(s) is key, also in the context of (green) public procurement and the EU Taxonomy for Sustainable Finance. In fact, the substantial contribution criteria for ‘Construction and real estate activities’ refer to Level(s) also in the context of preparing for re-use and recycling of CDW. There is therefore a clear link between the findings of the report, the EU Taxonomy and Level(s), whereby Level(s) is the reporting and verification tool used to demonstrate alignment with the EU Taxonomy criteria which in turn are in line with the findings of the JRC report.

Would you have any recommendations for Level(s) users, particularly in terms of how they make use of Indicator 2.2., ‘CDW and materials’?

Indicator 2.2. is not only useful for demonstrating Taxonomy-alignment but can be used as an information tool to analyse the degree of circularity. For instance, it can be used to identify how much CDW is generated, how much of it is prepared for re-use, and how much is recycled. This provides an important indication of how circular a building and a specific intervention is, and for which material-specific fractions improvements are needed and possible. Level(s) is instrumental in having this done in a standardised format to be able to compare one building with another on equal terms and avoid comparing apples with oranges.