What is the Circular Economy?

?

Local council, designers, builders, and manufacturers have begun to discuss solutions to construction waste but there are currently barriers as to why this isn't currently working. Finding solutions to address these barriers will change our industry and the way we design and build.

As a commercial interior designer working in Brisbane for the past decade, I have seen the quantity of furniture, equipment and materials that end up in landfill. The average life of a workplace, retail or hospitality fitout is less than five years. The life of the materials and furniture we put into these spaces has the capacity to be much longer.

Steel, aluminium, concrete, timber, stone, glass, ceramic tiles, and brick are highly durable and can last many decades. These materials end up in landfill because, in Australia, it has been deemed too hard or too expensive to recycle and it has been cheaper to source new materials rather than salvage existing ones. Furniture and equipment are also sent to landfill long before their end of life because overseas manufacture makes it cheaper to source new than to repaint and recover.

Construction is one of the highest contributors to both carbon emissions and waste. While sustainable design has become a buzz word in the industry, the focus is on the selection of new materials rather than the reuse of existing resources. It isn't common practice to design products and fitouts for reuse. The design of our workplaces, restaurants and hospitality venues is often driven by trends rather than based on the existing resources we already have at hand.

A decade ago, I completed a Master degree with Griffith University exploring how we can reuse local industry waste in the design of retail fitouts in Brisbane. My research centred on the creation of a circular economy in which products and fitouts are designed to be reused. At this time, leading manufacturers in Europe were already introducing product takeback schemes to remanufacture and reuse materials. It is only now that these ideas are starting to emerge in Brisbane.

ReNew Design are looking for pilot projects in workplace, hospitality and retail refurbishment who want to create 0 waste fitouts. We are bringing together a team of industry partners, builders and suppliers who are working to find better solutions to the way we design and build.