Mat-loop

The reduction of greenhouse gas emissions from the construction industry (which generates more than 74 MT/year of poorly recycled waste and accounts for 30% of total greenhouse gas emissions in Switzerland) inevitably requires the consideration of the life cycle impacts of materials and the implementation of a circular economy to reuse deconstruction and excavation materials.

However, reuse comes up against logistical problems which represent real obstacles to its deployment on an industrial scale, due to the spatial and temporal asynchrony of supply and demand and certain legal obstacles. In the canton of Geneva, several private and state actors are working to remove these obstacles and to develop regulations and tools to promote reuse.

The Mat-loop research project, funded by the Federal Office of Energy and led by HEPIA, proposes to take advantage of the very favourable ecosystem of the Geneva region to identify and develop, with leading partners in the field (see below), robust logistical solutions that can be replicated on a national scale for the reuse of construction materials, and to test them on pilot projects, thus contributing to the evolution of the construction industry towards greater circularity.

Picture: B. Séraphin