Circularity of existing aluminium unitised curtain wall facades: Unlocking Value from Waste

The circular potential of existing aluminium curtain wall facades is investigated in this study. The focus is primarily on reuse, refurbishment and re-manufacturing, aiming to raise the value of materials that have not yet reached the end of their service life. The increasing concern about resource depletion, damage to the ecosphere and the need...

Transforming the Built Environment through Product Service Systems: A Path towards a Circular Economy: “Exploring the Key Characteristics, Challenges, and Solutions in Implementing PSS in the Built Environment"

As climate change and resource shortages increasingly threaten our planet, the built environment sector is under scrutiny due to its significant contribution to carbon emissions and global raw resource extraction. A transition towards a circular economy, replacing the prevailing "take-make-dispose" model, is crucial. This research explores the...

A policy framework for the circular economy: Lessons from the EU

Transitioning from the ‘take-make-dispose’ linear production system to a circular economy can strengthen sustainability, and governments play a vital role. Recent scholarship has investigated policies for circular economy transition, but few studies take a perspective on circularity reform that spans geographies, industries, and product life...

Bridging the gap between mathematical optimization and structural engineering: Design, experiments and numerical simulation of optimized concrete girders

Concrete, as the most widely used construction material, is associated with a high environmental impact. Within the present study, structural optimization is the method of choice to counter this issue. The entire process, from optimization, to design, experiments and numerical simulation is outlined. Embedded in the framework of a design...

Reusing Timber Formwork in Building Construction: Testing, Redesign, and Socio-Economic Reflection

In 2018, the construction sector was responsible for 39% of the worldwide energy and process-related carbon dioxide emissions (Global Alliance for Buildings and Construction et al., 2019). This is partly due to the embodied carbon, which represents the carbon emissions related to building construction and material production (LETI, 2020). While...

Global water and energy losses from consumer avoidable food waste

Food products require significant amounts of energy and water throughout their lifecycle, yet humanity wastes 1.3e9 tons of food on a yearly basis. A large part of this waste occurs during the consumption (post-retail) phase of the food system as avoidable food waste, the discarded edible (parts of) food products. In this study, we explore the...

Rare gems or mundane practice? Resource constraints as drivers of frugal innovation

Frugal innovation and related concepts are receiving increasing scholarly attention. While recent progress in the conceptualisation of frugal innovation as a phenomenon has been considerable, insights into the antecedents of frugal innovation remain relatively poor. We add to this literature by systematically conceptualising, theorising and...

An Integrated Planning Approach: Maintenance Task Scheduling Optimization

Aircraft base maintenance consists of hundreds of tasks including preventive, corrective and modification tasks which have to be scheduled to a few check moments per year. The allocation of tasks to checks represents a complex scheduling problem due to the constraints involved. A mixed integer linear programming model was developed to optimize...

Origin and Development of Environmental Design

Buildings are characterised as some of the greatest consumers and pollutants of the planet. However, the genesis of environmental design, in the context of its modern meaning, as shown in this paper, is not so much based on initial requests to reduce the negative pressure on the environment, but more on the tendency to ensure the continuity of...

Sustainability criteria and the bio-based materials sector in the Netherlands

Fossil fuels will run out in the foreseeable future. Out entire economic system is build upon fossil fuels and building up another base for this economic system is challenging. The only alternative for making materials that normally are derived from fossil fuels is the Bio-Based Economy. Materials in this way get made from biomass, such as sugar...

Extending bioenergy towards smart biomass use Issues of social acceptance at Park Cuijk, The Netherlands

Background While the share of bioenergy in the overall energy supply has increased over the last decade, its social acceptance is fragile, mainly due to concerns about negative sustainability impacts. In this paper, we will investigate to what extent the extension of bioenergy towards ‘smart’ or ‘cascaded’ biomass use enhances a project’s social...

A Robust Indicator for Promoting Circular Economy through Recycling

In order to move towards a more sustainable development, it is necessary not only to minimize the use of materials in the design stage and to find new materials as alternatives to nonrenewable ones (e.g. optical fiber instead of copper, biopolymers instead of polymers from oil) but also to reclaim as much as possible material value through...

Developments and challenges in design for sustainability of electronics

Sustainability of electronic products until recently mainly focused on improving the energy efficiency. Recently, resource efficiency has become of growing importance. Due to the use of relatively small amounts of many valuable and scarce materials, often intimately mixed, the design of electronic products deserves specific attention. From a...

A contextual and spatial approach towards resource cycles

Multiple system-based concepts exist to analyse and manage urban throughput of resource flows, examples are Urban Metabolism, Industrial Ecology and Energy Potential Mapping. Common threads in these propositions are fundamental principles valid in nature, notably homeostasis and thermodynamics. Those and likeminded concepts are valuable links in...

Circular Business Model Innovation: A process framework and a tool for business model innovation in a circular economy

The Master’s programme Industrial Ecology is jointly organised by Leiden University and Delft University of Technology. Companies need new business models to grasp the opportunities of a circular economy. This thesis investigates to what extent existing frameworks, methods and tools for business model innovation are useful to cope with the...

Governance strategies for sustainable innovations: Global mapping of resource efficient products and technologies

This paper addresses governance strategies to promote the implementation of resource efficient technologies and products in order to create sustainable innovation. The paper highlights results from a global mapping study of products and technologies with high resource efficiency potential. The results are based on a methodological framework,...