The construction and real estate industry is one of Sweden's largest consumers of energy andraw materials. According to figures from Boverket, the building industry was responsible for21% of Sweden's total greenhouse gas emissions in 2019. If Sweden is to fulfil its commitmentsunder the Paris Agreement and at the same time achieve the climate goals for the 2030 Agenda,resourceefficient measures are required immediately. The transition to circular economy can bea vital step in this necessary change. In circular economy, it is crucial to eliminate waste andpollutants which can be achieved by increasing efficiency and maintaining products andmaterials in a circular cycle. The aim of this study is to examine which strategies can be applied to implementing circulareconomy in the construction industry and what opportunities and obstacles they entail. I havealso investigated whether life-cycle assessment can be an effective tool for this implementation.To answer these questions, interviews have been carried through with researchers and businessrepresentatives who have extensive knowledge of sustainable construction and who arecommitted to finding solutions to combat climate change in the construction industry. Anextensive literature study has also been performed. The results indicate that there are several opportunities and sought-after measures with thecircular economy concept, of which the most significant one is its potential to increase resourceefficiency and thereby generate climate benefits. Strategies for the implementation of CEinclude methods such as circular procurement, design for deconstruction, material passports,upcycling and reversible building design. New smart business models can also generate newrevenues and create more employment opportunities. Challenges highlighted in the study are above all lack of financial incentives. For instance, inmost cases, it is at present more profitable to buy virgin than secondary materials. The lack ofspace for intermediate storage of materials to be reused is also a challenge. There is often a lackof knowledge with suppliers and customers. In addition, there are several legal issues regardingthe division of responsibilities and finally the need of more efficient policy instruments.

The development of society calls for a new approach to traditional building systems, which no longer meet the demands of today's society. This is mainly manifested in the following points: 1. Traditional buildings, when decayed, generate a large amount of construction waste, which occupies more land and resources in the form of landfills. New buildings should aim to minimize or eliminate construction waste generation, thus reducing environmental damage. The transformation of buildings from "Cradle to Grave" to "Cradle to Cradle." 2. Different ages, social roles, and professions require varying building functionalities and sizes. Buildings should be adaptable to meet these diverse needs. 3. Buildings should not be permanently fixed to a single location but should be in a continuous process of change, even to the extent of being movable. 4. Buildings should have a growth and transformation process, where components can be recycled and reused, similar to how chemical elements can cycle naturally in the environment. 5. Buildings should be designed for rapid transport, assembly, and disassembly. They should not require specialized construction workers for installation. This is in contrast to traditional buildings with long construction periods, poor construction quality, and high levels of complexity. 6. Building design should be simplified and modular, allowing for quick achievement of aesthetic, functional, safety, and livability requirements. Owners should be able to participate in the design process, enabling them to meet their own usage and living needs. This approach differs from traditional building design, which requires extensive involvement from trained architects and engineers, resulting in higher construction costs and resource consumption. 7. New recycling houses should be adaptable for various functions and building types, such as houses, apartments, townhouses, offices, affordable housing, single-story or multi-story buildings, and even high-rise structures. 8. In summary, the concept of recycling houses aligns with the need for sustainable and adaptable buildings that minimize waste, accommodate diverse needs, promote ease of construction, and allow for resource conservation. / Master of Architecture / The development of society calls for a new approach to traditional building systems, which no longer meet the demands of today's society. This is mainly manifested in the following points: 1. Traditional buildings, when decayed, generate a large amount of construction waste, which occupies more land and resources in the form of landfills. New buildings should aim to minimize or eliminate construction waste generation, thus reducing environmental damage. The transformation of buildings from "Cradle to Grave" to "Cradle to Cradle." 2. Different ages, social roles, and professions require varying building functionalities and sizes. Buildings should be adaptable to meet these diverse needs. 3. Buildings should not be permanently fixed to a single location but should be in a continuous process of change, even to the extent of being movable. 4. Buildings should have a growth and transformation process, where components can be recycled and reused, similar to how chemical elements can cycle naturally in the environment. 5. Buildings should be designed for rapid transport, assembly, and disassembly. They should not require specialized construction workers for installation. This is in contrast to traditional buildings with long construction periods, poor construction quality, and high levels of complexity. 6. Building design should be simplified and modular, allowing for quick achievement of aesthetic, functional, safety, and livability requirements. Owners should be able to participate in the design process, enabling them to meet their own usage and living needs. This approach differs from traditional building design, which requires extensive involvement from trained architects and engineers, resulting in higher construction costs and resource consumption. 7. New recycling houses should be adaptable for various functions and building types, such as houses, apartments, townhouses, offices, affordable housing, single-story or multi-story buildings, and even high-rise structures. 8. In summary, the concept of recycling houses aligns with the need for sustainable and adaptable buildings that minimize waste, accommodate diverse needs, promote ease of construction, and allow for resource conservation.

In modern society, car manufactures are actively pursuing vehicle light weighting under both stricter government regulations due to environmental concerns and consumers’ demand for better fuel economy. Under such circumstances, OEMs are using more parts using aluminum alloys to replace parts made with steel. New forming processes are being developed to produce structural components to achieve higher in-service strength using higher strength aluminum alloys. Two of the commonly used high strength aluminum alloys, AA6111 and AA7075, are being considered for elevated temperature sheet forming applications. With more aluminum applications in vehicle and good recyclability of aluminum components, there is a concern of contamination from transition metals such as Fe, Mn and Cr from vehicle end of life scraps getting into aluminum scrap stream. Such impurity elements can have profound impact on aluminum alloy’s mechanical properties, performance and formability at room and elevated temperatures. This study is focused on variants of AA6111 and AA7075 alloys with increased recycling content, and thus higher amounts of the above transition metals. The objective is to investigate the effect of impurity alloying elements on final microstructure, mechanical properties and formability of the above sheet materials. Formability is studied in terms of sheet bendability and elevated temperature forming limit diagrams (FLDs) using a hot gas bulge tester. / Thesis / Master of Applied Science (MASc)

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There is a great need for reducing the extraction of limited resources of the Earth today. Oneway to achieve this, inter alia, is through increased recycling of material. The UN is activelytaking action on the matter, on a global level, and regionally the European Union hasdeveloped a directive on material waste. The Swedish construction sector is responsible forapproximately a third of the total generated waste, and measures regarding construction wasteshould thus be prioritized. Based on the abovementioned EU directive, the SwedishEnvironmental Protection Agency has developed a national action plan for waste, in whichconstruction and demolition waste is a focal point. JM AB is one of the leading corporationsin the Nordic countries in terms of housing development projects and one of their keyconcepts is sustainability. Not only does JM conduct its work in accordance with the currentrecommendations of both national and regional bodies, but in addition it has raised theambitions even further.JM is actively working to reduce the amount of landfill waste as well as the total amount ofwaste, and it has a good structure in place for doing so. An area of improvement with recyclingthat has now been identified is separation at source of combustible waste. Materials such aswood, plastics and corrugated cardboard can be separated from other combustible materials.This would not only increase the waste being recycled but also decrease the waste being burntfor energy extraction. The purpose of this thesis is to examine obstacles and possibilitieswithin the current recycling of combustible waste. The main ambition is for the results toprovide a foundation for the work of JM with regards to this, but hopefully other corporationsand actors within the construction sector will find the results useful and helpful as well.An internal survey was conducted and the questionnaire included both open questions andquestions with multiple-choice answers. Six employees at JM also participated in interviews.For added depth and more thorough analysis two waste contractors were also interviewed.Furthermore, a literature review was conducted and suggested that there is a strong need forchange in recycling within the entire construction sector. The review also showed that manysimilar problems exist in other construction companies.The survey, literature review and interviews lead to several action proposals of varying extentand complexity. Some of them are more specific, such as clearer signage on containers, newtank solutions, introduction of recycling instructions, and focus on recycling of wrappingplastics. Other proposals respond to more complex issues, such as a lack of commitment andsubstandard planning in the initial stages. What increases dedication and commitment is veryspecific for each individual. A shift in behavior relative to recycling, as well as increasedknowledge of combustibles, are both necessary. For this to happen a continuous effort isrequired, which in and of itself is a challenge, as well as clear leadership, division ofresponsibilities, and top down support within the corporate group.In a broader perspective, better cooperation from all actors within the construction sector isnecessary. An increased producer responsibility overall is required and improvements inwaste management alone is not sufficient. Producers should ensure that products andwrapping can be reused or recycled. This requires better and easier access to recycling, butalso a viable market for recycled material, and by extension manufacturers should be obligedto use more recycled material in their products.

Waste from construction and demolition-building activities is increasing every day. Landfills have almost reached their capacity. When thinking about the negative impact of demolishing activities on the environment it becomes very necessary to think about reusing and recycling building materials in new construction or perhaps better recycling our thoughts on how to make use of waste materials. In Kevin Lynch's book, Wasting Away, he wrote: "Architects must begin to think about holes in the ground and about flows of materials." Studies show that construction and demolition activities are the primary source of solid waste worldwide. For example construction and demolition wastes constitute about 40% of the total solid waste stream in the United States. The growing interest in materials and resource conservation in the United States is inherent in the growth of green building practices. The USGBC identifies six categories in the Materials and Resources (MR) section of LEED. One of these six categories is Resource Reuse (RR). Interestingly enough, a recent study about the cost of green buildings indicated that RR was the category credits least often achieved in most LEED certified projects. Literature suggests that there are a number of constraints and barriers to resource reuse primarily due to the complexity of buildings but perhaps the most important barrier, according to many architects, is the lack of easily accessible information to the design team on resource reuse. Therefore, as we promote the idea of building material reuse to a wider audience of designers and architects, we mus not forget that in the Architecture, Engineering and Construction (AEC) industry, both Reuse and Recycle terms are used interchangeably without yet a clear distinction between them. The use of arbitrary descriptions to distinguish reuse from recycle has caused nothing but more confusion to the public. This study argues that the real distinction between reuse and recycle exists in Knowledge and Information. This suggests that design with reuse requires a paradigm shift in the required knowledgebase and the way information flows within the design process. Unfortunately, the structure of this paradigm shift is not known and has not been well defined. Since knowledge forms the core of building a Decision Support Systems (DSS) for a design team in order to consider reuse, it is necessary to capture the required knowledge and information from the industry experts through a Knowledge Acquisition (KA) process. This knowledge can then be used to 1) identify the building material reuse criteria and 2) to build a prescriptive decision model and 3) to map the process design of the current traditional architectural design workflow and the proposed one. The overarching goal of this study is to use the building material reuse knowledgebase for 1) building a Unified Virtual Repository database to be connected to all available physical repositories and share a unified standard of information. 2) When the unified virtual repository is integrated with the Building Information Modeling (BIM) database, the DSS can work as a feedback and feed forward support for architects and designers as they consider building material reuse in new designs and constructions. / Ph. D.

Yes / Circular Economy (CE) and the adoption of its principles globally are more important than ever to sustain the rate of production of goods and services to meet the ever-increasing consumer demand that is burdening the environment and society. This study investigates the adoption of CE principles amongst emerging economies as the challenges faced by these economies are generally different in terms of resource availability, varying government policies and consumer behaviour from those of developed economies. This research presents an empirically validated CE adoption model using a sample of 183 consumer responses. The study highlights the strong influence of factors such as consumer behaviour on the acceptance of remanufactured products and using products as a service to encourage the adoption of CE practices in emerging economies. This research offers businesses, consumers and policy makers insights into measures that have been taken by emerging economies that are in line with CE principles.

Thesis (MEng) -- Stellenbosch University, 2014. / ENGLISH ABSTRACT: See PDF for abstract. / AFRIKKANSE OPSOMMING: Sien PDF vir die opsomming.

This paper describes the processes, methods, backgrounds, and economic challenges, of Desalination and Water Recycling and provide current examples of both. To create a baseline with which to compare the two methods, I will also delve into the history of California water policy. This complicated past is the reason water importation into Southern California remains the main method of obtaining water. Yet, as the current drought continues and technology advances, the need for imported water will become obsolete as the methods for recycling and desalinating water become less expensive, more convenient and more equitable. In the conclusion, all the methods will be compared and I will give suggestions on potential solutions for solving San Diego’s water dependence.