Societal development has long relied on the intensive use of natural resources, resulting in significant environmental impacts associated with their extraction, transformation, and disposal. Within this context, the construction sector plays a central role as the largest consumer of materials and a major source of solid waste. At the same time, the built environment has accumulated large material stocks that will become available in the future. These stocks represent a potential source of secondary materials through urban mining. However, unlocking this potential requires a detailed characterisation of material stocks.
Despite growing interest in material stock analysis, research remains unevenly developed. Evidence from the Global South is limited, particularly in Latin America, where data constraints hinder analysis and recovery strategies. Furthermore, non-residential buildings remain underrepresented in the literature, despite their scale and distinct material composition.
This study aims to assess the urban mining potential of materials embedded in commercial logistics centres in the Metropolitan Region of Santiago, Chile, using this sector as a case study of non-residential buildings in a data-constrained Global South context.
The methodology combines a bottom-up, spatially explicit Material Stock Analysis (MSA) using GIS with a dynamic Material Flow Analysis (dMFA) to quantify and characterise material stocks and estimate their future availability.
The results show that logistics centres in Santiago contain over 5 million tonnes of materials, with a highly homogeneous composition dominated by concrete (over 90%), followed by steel and masonry in minor shares. Material stocks are strongly spatially concentrated, with a limited number of municipalities and large centres accounting for a significant share of the total mass. Temporal analysis indicates that the stock is relatively young, reflecting rapid expansion over the past two decades. As a result, most materials are expected to remain in use for several decades, with peak outflows projected around the 2070s, leading to limited short-term availability and a predominantly long-term urban mining potential.
These findings highlight both opportunities and constraints for urban mining. Spatial concentration and ownership may facilitate coordinated large-scale recovery, whereas the dominance of concrete poses challenges for material recovery under current technological and market conditions. At the same time, the timing of material availability provides a window for anticipatory planning and the development of recovery systems.
This study provides the first spatially explicit assessment of non-residential building stocks in Chile, addressing both geographical and sectoral gaps, and offers a transferable framework for assessing urban mining potential in data-constrained contexts.