Circular Ecosystems in the Built Environment

How to boost the transition towards a more sustainable Built Environment capable of assimilating residue streams from local metallurgical foundries in the form of geopolymers (a substitute of cement)?

Photo: © SREMat – KU Leuven

Cement is responsible for 7% of all CO2 emissions.

Cement is the second most consumed resource in the world after water, and its production is responsible for 7% of all CO2 emissions worldwide. Geopolymers made out of industrial residues are an environmentally friendlier substitute capable of reducing its emissions by up to 77% compared to standard cement.

Materials Innovation collaborated with Digitize2grow and KU Leuven – SREMat to contribute to the emergence of a Circular Built Environment in Belgium, where the residues from the local metallurgical foundries could be used as a resource, decreasing the need for using cement, which has a higher CO2 footprint. Nevertheless, introducing a new technology in a traditional sector that also requires a strong symbiotic collaboration between sectors not used to work together is a very big and complex challenge.

To tackle this grand grand challenge, we started by organizing a first workshop bringing together diverse stakeholders –  from Metallurgical Foundries through Civil Engineers and Consultants to Construction Materials Producers. The main goal of this workshop was to map the ecosystem for introducing upcycled geopolymers in the Built Environment.

Trends in the Built Environment

Materials Innovation conducted a 360 degrees assessment (based on qualitative research via phone calls and deep internet search along with patents and papers research) that provided the current trends and drivers of the Built Environment as of today. This research was used to inspire and help each one of the attendees to share their own views during the first part of the workshop. The posters also served to collect feedback from participants by means of voting stickers on areas that needed attention leading to the co-creation of a heat map (photo below).

Photos: © SREMat – KU Leuven

Building a Circular Ecosystem

Digitize2grow facilitated the systems mapping activities based on its Ecosystems Mapping methodology where participants selected and classified the required stakeholders and divided them into 6 different categories or ‘tribes’ having key roles: The Shapers, The Core Builders, The Influencers, The Money Feeders, The Knowledge Feeders and The Consumers.

Next Actions

By the end of the day participants got a clear picture of the ecosystem that needs to be built. Actions were defined to connect to the different tribes and to activate them in order to bring the new technology to the Built Environment market.

Photos: © SREMat – KU Leuven

Do you have a project in mind? Are you inspired by this workshop? Are you interested in contributing to this initiative? Don’t hesitate to reach out.

Companies that participated in this workshop.