Digital platform facilitates reuse of building materials

In the EU, the construction industry accounts for 40 per cent of all CO₂ emissions, waste, and use of energy, material and water resources. As of 1 January 2020, the EU requires that 70 per cent of all building materials (by weight) must be reused, recycled or recovered.

Worldwide, the volume of construction waste will nearly double to 2.2 billion metric tons by 2025. There’s a similar trend in Norway, where the construction industry accounts for 20 per cent of all waste – almost 2 million metric tons. Moreover, most of this waste (36 per cent) still goes to landfill and recycling rates continue to drop.

Closing the loop with “reduce, reuse and recycle” practices is key to minimising waste in the construction industry.

Loopfront is a digital infrastructure that delivers live data on materials and processes, making a circular economy easy and profitable. Loopfront functions as a digital ecosystem and connects building owners, construction companies and industrial actors in a circular network in order to reduce waste in commercial, public and residential construction projects and existing buildings.

Materials that can generally be recycled from construction sites include steel and concrete elements, aluminium, untreated timber, cardboard, paint and plastics. Leftover materials may include complete products, such as furniture, doors, windows, insulation, flooring and technical equipment. Loopfront enables users to interact and list all available materials for recycling, reuse and sale.

Loopfront provides access to Norway’s largest circular platform for building materials and fixtures. By promoting collaboration between multiple sectors and reducing construction waste, it reduces CO₂ emissions as well as overall building costs.

Loopfront enables users to save materials, manage transport and storage, and obtain documentation about the materials. Loopfront also offers reports on circular process options for the materials, access to non-binding testing of own circular processes, training in circular economy, and reports on savings on CO₂, waste and costs.

The company estimates that users can achieve cost savings of up to 70 per cent by integrating circular processes and savings of up to 15 per cent in total CO₂-eqv. by reusing or recycling building materials.

Today, Loopfront is a functioning, mobile, cloud-based platform, with simple live collaboration possibilities, data collection and simple filtering. A newly developed solution for a public digital marketplace will be available in 2021.

The company is currently working with several organisations, including municipalities in Norway and Sweden, and has plans to enter more countries in the EU market.