Continuing the building's material cycle

Abstract

Recently, the Cradle to Cradle (C2C) theory set ground in the Netherlands, propounding that environmental impact reduction can provide a positive economical impulse to stakeholders. The building industry has warmly received this approach and considers it to be a solution to the above-mentioned burden. However, if the building sector wants to implement C2C into their practice, a paradigm shift is required. Therefore, the sector must overcome the many difficulties it encounters while striving for an eco-effective built environment. Current sustainability strategies focus on reducing the negative environmental impact of buildings. The systems theory of C2C however aims at a positive impact; this could suggest that the state-of-the-art becomes inadequate when adopting C2C as a strategy for improvement. This paper reviews contemporary systems theories and analyses them in the light of C2C, focusing on closed or continuous materials cycles. The paper finalises by describing the hiatus in and correspondence between these current theories and C2C theory. From the study we found that C2C provides new features that help continue materials cycles, just as the contemporary theories provide potentially useful additional material for C2C. Moreover, it reveals a striking difference between the state-of-the-art and C2C. For this paper, the Dutch building practice and industry were taken as case study. Approaches and results nevertheless are replicable to be used in other countries striving for optimised management of resources.