 Hello and welcome everyone. Thank you for joining us for the first of our three part briefing series reduce and reuse How to cut greenhouse gas emissions from a building materials plastics and food today We will kick off with building materials from production to reuse. I'm Dan Berset executive director at the environmental and energy study Institute Environmental and energy study Institute was founded in 1984 on a bipartisan basis by members of Congress to provide science-based information About environmental energy and climate change topics to policymakers more recently We've also developed a program to provide technical assistance to rural utilities interested in on-bill financing programs for their customers ESI provides informative objective nonpartisan coverage of climate change topics and briefings Written materials and on social media all of our educational resources including briefing recordings fact sheets issue briefs articles Newsletters and podcasts are always available for free online www.esi.org The best way to stay informed about our latest educational resources is to subscribe to our bi-weekly newsletter climate change solutions It's a little hard for me to believe but our briefings today tomorrow and Friday are the last of 2021 Our session today is our 26th of the year. We knew when we started way back on January 29th with our first briefing of the year That this would be You're very critical for climate change. We were hopeful for an infrastructure package broader investments and new policies from Congress higher Appropriations for federal programs and a return to US leadership on the global stage and in particular a cop 26 We still have a few more weeks to go before 22 2022 gets here So more things will happen But given that level of ambition, I think we can say we made some progress More to do though. So keep watch for notices for the first of our briefings early next year I think you're gonna find our panels very interesting when we come back after the new year Our focus today is the climate impact of our refuse and the need to rethink our policies to emphasize reduce and reuse On April 20th. We held a briefing rethinking reduce reuse and recycle policies and programs to address waste If you missed it, I encourage you to go back and watch the presentation and review the materials We covered a lot of ground during that briefing and learned a lot about some innovative local approaches to waste management And since then we've really wanted to revisit waste issues, which brings us to this week and we start with building materials If you watch a lot of ESI briefings, you know that we know that the building sector is ripe with potential emissions reductions Benefits from energy efficiency to grid edge technologies to wood construction and embodied carbon. We uncover it all and Back at the second congressional climate camp in February. We were joined by Liz Beardsley with the US Green Building Council She introduced us to a buildings life cycle carbon footprint and you can go back and watch her presentation But for now, I wanted to share two takeaways The first is that about a third of a building's carbon footprint comes from scope three activities Which are defined as all other indirect emissions like maintenance and repair and end of life And that's a lot and the second takeaway is her point that as the grid becomes cleaner and buildings become more efficient Emissions from those scope three activities becomes relatively more significant more deserving of our attention I'm very pleased to be joined today by two experts who will help us continue our learning about greenhouse gas emissions From building materials and how to make the most of materials that we've already created But before I introduce them I wanted to remind everyone that we have some time at the end of our panel today for questions And we will do our best to incorporate questions from the audience If you have a question you have two options to send it to us first You can send us an email and email address to use is ask ask at esi.org Or even better, you can follow us on Twitter at ESI online and send it to us that way Our first of two panelists is Jordan Pulmeri Jordan is an environmental scientist and policy advisor in the materials management program at the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality Where he coordinates projects around the built environment life cycle assessments and purchasing He's worked on building and zoning codes and served as a technical and policy expert for small housing initiatives He's advised local regional and global green building rating systems and leads assist and leads a program to help Oregon concrete producers and Develop environmental product declarations a transparency label focused on disclosing embodied carbon Jordan welcome to the briefing today. I will turn it over to you Great. Thanks so much Dan I'm assuming you could all see my slides and hear me. If not, just please let me know all right, well, thanks again for the introduction and Inviting me to speak today Today, we're going to talk about a few things Here we go We'll start out talking about the carbon impacts of building materials. We'll talk about some short-term Strategies to reduce these carbon impacts and then we'll start to talk a little bit about the vision of a longer-term strategy towards a more circular building materials sector and then Fernanda the second speaker will talk a lot more about the circular building economy So let's jump into it. So when we think about the carbon impacts of building materials like any product Building materials have a life cycle, you know, they're they're extracted They're transported. They're manufactured. They're they're used and eventually disposed of and emissions over a building materials life cycle Happen all over the place they happen all throughout this chart and typically when we talk about the carbon impacts of building materials we use a term called embodied carbon and Embodied carbon are all the emissions that come from building materials from these life cycle stages, right? And these are becoming increasingly more important because they're starting to show up more and more in our greenhouse gas inventories at Whatever level we're doing our greenhouse gas inventories Here in this slide we see global co2 emissions And we can see that building materials comprise about 11% of all material of all those emissions in my home state of Oregon we see a similar picture slightly different because we're Actually constructing less than the globe is And but either way in Oregon we see about 30% of all emissions are from Buildings and about 8% of those are from the materials so we see that building materials are starting to play a large role and a lot of people are starting to pay attention a lot to New buildings in particular And and one of the reasons we pay attention to new buildings and embodied carbon Is because as we compare the embodied versus the operational carbon Over time we can see that the embodied carbon Is a big deal over the first 10 years of a building's life and and even over the first 30 years And we know that in the climate arena we need to take big actions here In the next 10 years. So let's take a look at this chart where it has A newly constructed office building and what we see is right from the start that big Yellow bar on the left are all the upfront embodied carbon emissions from Manufacturing and producing those building materials and getting them to the site And that's a big pulse of emissions right at the start And then we see two different scenarios one is a standard code building That performance building and as we use that building as we use energy in that building Emissions occur over time But we can see those emissions are quite small compared to that first Big upfront embodied carbon and so over the first 10 years of the building What we see in this chart is that embodied carbon of the materials comprises anywhere between 38 to 67 percent Of all the carbon in the first 10 years That's a lot and as we extend out to 2050 you know a common next climate target We still see embodied carbon makes up a significant portion of these emissions And then and then of course like dan said in the introduction when we're building, you know, zero energy buildings The only thing making up the carbon emissions are the materials So so this is why we're paying more and more attention to embodied carbon because it matters a lot in the short-term opportunities In in particular for buildings and it also matters in the long term for our materials economy So there's a bunch of different ways to reduce embodied carbon. We're going to talk a little bit big picture in this talk today And uh, so let's let's let's let's start going down this list. These are listed in the order in which Their ability to reduce emissions, right? So the best thing you can do is the first at the top is just to build less When we're consuming fewer building materials We have our best chance of reducing emissions the vast majority of emissions from building materials are in the production of those materials So we need to figure out ways how to reduce production related impacts first Obviously one another way is to reuse existing buildings in their place. How do we reuse buildings rather than Always having to build new buildings smaller, right? This this is where occupancy matters Having five thousand square foot homes and two people in them is is not always the best use of space materials or energy We obviously need to be reusing materials. We'll talk about a couple of policies about material reuse When we are designing new buildings, we really need to optimize these buildings both for shape and structure and Long-term durability And so on and so forth and we have tools to do that today called whole building life cycle assessment Once you've actually chosen your materials what you're going to do you can then optimize those materials through Asking or requiring EPDs environmental product declarations. We'll talk about those as well There's a lot of different ways to optimize materials And then finally last but not least is to minimize the waste during construction And then recover as as much as possible. So you see that recovery there recycling Is all the way at the bottom of the list. It certainly has value But we'll talk a little bit about how there's we need to be thinking about the whole life cycle of materials here Not just the recycling of them at the end of life So that's that's sort of the big picture of how to reduce and now For the next few slides, we're going to talk about different reduction strategies And and in these i'm going to be talking about policies that are happening that are actually happening around the country and being implemented And we'll kind of pop through these at a high level So the first one is when we think about zoning and zoning controls where we build how big we build so on and so forth And in the city of portland, uh, they just passed new zoning regulations that actually limits the size of single family homes to about 2500 square feet. Um, this is quite a reduction. You they they used to be able to be built almost double this size But there's also other allowances recognizing that if you're going to be building multiple units On two or three units, you're allowed to build larger than 2500 square feet If you build your unit to be more adaptable over time to have an accessory dwelling unit You're also allowed different allowances. So this is a recognition that you know materials and space matter and and how do we use them more wisely? When we think about new construction being permitted, um, vancouver bc Um is the first place in north america at least to require that newly constructed a portion of newly constructed buildings Measure the impact of their building materials at the time of permit It's really hard to reduce your impacts if you don't know what they are, right? So measurement and disclosure is one of the first policies that we want to see implemented in in in terms of embodied carbon And vancouver is leaving the way there Back to city of portland in portland, or again They passed the the first in the nation deconstruction requirement for residential homes built between before 1940 Again, this is not only the value of the materials At the end of their life and their ability to offset the the production related impacts But this also builds in a material economy. Um, it builds jobs. It builds And and it is able to you know, um train a different type of workforce than maybe we've had in the past within the material sector This is a great program in portland Another effort we see all over the place at this point Is the use of environmental product declarations for public purchasing these these policies are often called by clean and What they do is they require e pds For certain building materials And then the the government purchasing of these building materials It would do two things it would require the e pd Which requires a manufacturer to measure and disclose impacts And then over time they would actually put carbon limits on their purchase of specific building materials at a state level This is now passed in the state of california and colorado There's been other efforts in other states that have not quite passed the legislative hurdle And there's also been efforts at the federal level. Um through what was the clean futures act To again require e pds And there may be more efforts in the path and in the future at the federal level as well So e pds are a really good tool What they are basically like nutrition facts labels like you'd see on a box of cereal But instead they're on building materials and they disclose how much carbon was emitted and producing the building materials How much how much energy was consumed and other environmental impacts They are third party certified and and e pds are are great and for a couple of reasons number one They really help the manufacturers of these materials identify where the hotspots are Where are the impacts and and where can we target first to reduce these impacts? And then obviously they give the consumer An opportunity to choose lower impact materials So so e pds are are really beneficial in a number of ways you could think of them kind of like You know energy star labels, but instead of measuring the efficiency of using a product like an appliance It's it's more about what is the efficiency of producing the product to begin with so so both of them matter and and e pds help fill that gap We like e pds so much here in oregon We had a program for the last three years with concrete producers where we provided technical assistance and financial incentives to get these things on the market We were successful and then we got you know over 1500 e pds published There may be a role for more public incentive programs in the future when we look towards europe and see some of their More advanced policies around building materials. A lot of them do involve on public Dollars and funding to get these programs going not only for manufacturing and disclosure, but also for innovation, right? We need to be able to support our industries in that way Um back to city of portland. They have a Uh a concrete procurement policy that on a local level is basically like a by clean Policy at a local level. They require e pds on local city projects. Um, they are setting a gwp limits Gwp is global warming potential. It's carbon right now Um, and those are expected to be to be published in a couple of months And then finally everybody needs to meet these thresholds at the end of the day If you want to bid on a city project you not only need an e pd, but your your carbon values need to be below a certain Threshold set so this is this can be done at the local level at the state level at the federal level There's there's a lot of opportunity for these different by clean policies And the thing that's um great about working with the city of portland on this is that they recognize that for certain materials like concrete You know People need to touch and feel this material and see how the low carbon alternative Sets differently trials differently and and understand that you have a whole workforce behind you that that is also responsible for you know, the proper installation of this material So they've been running pilot projects To demonstrate that these low carbon materials can be used in the field that they can be used By the traditional workforce doing this work and and so here is one of the pilot projects they were doing um on ADA sidewalk ramps and they've been a great leader in the field because they're they've gone on to do a number of Other pilot projects to say well, how does low carbon concrete work in driveways and ADA ramps? And what this is doing is is it's helping them Not just put a mandate forth But say help the whole workforce come up to speed on on what it's like to use these mixes and they're finding Really great success We also see another policy pathway for carbon reductions through building code Moran county in california was the first county to Institute limits On on concrete and again these are carbon limits for different strength classes of concrete And so building code is another pathway For that and then the last couple slides here is sort of a transition so those are all things that are happening now right these are policies that will they'll affect carbon emissions right now and we're going to talk a lot more after this about sort of a longer term vision of a more circular building material sector and i'm just going to start us off with sort of one example that we're exploring locally here um in oregon and kind of Speaks to the the full life cycle of a material and and this one in particular is glass You know when we talk about waste and when we talk about recovery Glass is one of these materials that that we have challenges with all over the country not just at my home state of oregon and When we think about what to do with glass This is a really good example of how to to to use the science and how to use information to figure out What the highest and best use of this glass is? Um in this case in this chart here What we see are are the carbon impacts all the way at the top of producing one ton of glass Right and so that's that big bar to the right any of the bars that go to the left are benefits any of the bars that go to the right are impacts And so that's the production related impacts of one ton of glass If we go all the way to the bottom of the chart we see there if we reuse that container rather than Recycling it or landfilling it if we actually reuse that container take it back in its form wash it and reuse it again There's tremendous environmental benefit. That's a really big bar on the bottom If we start stepping up the chart we see that recycling that glass bottle into fiberglass insulation Which is another typical pathway has has benefit but considerable considerably less that bar is a lot smaller um The other thing we see is that when we go up and we recycle that bottle into another glass container Again, there's benefit here, but it's like considerably less benefit than reusing the bottle A lot of people think there's a ton of benefit in recycling glass into glass because it's it can keep going infinitely And yes, there is environmental benefit, but we need to be um We also need to melt that glass down again and that takes a tremendous amount of energy to do that So when we avoid melting glass down to make new glass shapes and we reuse the container down on the bottom We see a lot of benefit. So we need to be thinking a little bit more broadly Um, and in some cases back to how we used to do things with glass bottle containers Finally, I want to point to this other big bar. We see to the left is you know recycling to what's called a posilon A posilon is a cement substitute now. We just learned that concrete has a lot of big impacts So we're trying to figure out how to reduce the impacts of concrete and one of the ways is to use less cement We can actually use glass by grinding it up into a fine powder and using it as a cement substitute And it's working um in a number of places around the country And so we've been trying to encourage knowing this information a couple of things in the state Both recycling of glass into glass posilon We've been trying to attract manufacturers of glass posilon to the state to help help concrete producers Have availability and supply of this material and there's also Container reuse programs that have been started by the organ beverage and recycling cooperative around the state of Oregon as well So we like to when we think about a circular economy We really need to be not just having our blinders on to say, you know Closed loop recycling right glass bottles right back into glass bottles We need to be thinking more broadly not just about glass here But about all of the materials that flow for our economy. So this is where I'm going to stop And um, I just thank you for your attention. I'm going to turn it over to our next speaker Thank you, Jordan. That was a great presentation Also very nice slides. Thank you for those as a reminder to our audience If you'd like to go back and revisit Jordan's presentation or slides. They're all available at www.yeside.org I'm really looking forward to the discussion But before we get to that portion of our panel to our program today We will get to hear from our second expert panelist and so let me introduce Fernanda Cruz Rios. She is an expert in circular economy in the built environment She is an architect by background and she received her phd in civil environmental and sustainable engineering in 2018 And she just completed a postdoctoral appointment on a transdisciplinary circular economy project at the University of Pittsburgh Fernanda, I'm really looking forward to your presentation today. Take it away Hi, thank you. Thank you Ben and thank you everyone for being here today Share my screen Okay, does that look good? Great, it looks great Okay, thank you. So now after Jordan's great presentation I want to invite you all to take a step back and to understand this long-term vision of the circular economy In the built environment and what policymakers can do to enable it And when I say built environment here, I mean everything from building materials to city infrastructure like roads and distribution systems as well So now I want to show you a vision of how this circular beauty would look like So first Buildings would be designed for the construction That means using modular and prefabricated components with demountable connections like boats instead of welding or adhesives, for example And that way building components are easy to maintain and to repair and they can be detached from from the building And that is important because buildings are made of several components with different lifespans And design for the construction allows us to remove these components Even an entire facade for example without having to demolish the whole building So these building components products and materials would have digital tags That contain information like their location the properties like structural strength for example and chemical composition Even the environment product labels that Jordan introduced as well The quality and also data about environmental impacts financial values, you name it So these digital tags are called material passports and they are already being developed and tested So when we're going to build or renovate a building imagine that we can use materials and products from the existing building stock So from what we already have in the city We call that urban mining and the buildings in our cities would work as material banks And that would replace the need for mining new materials ideally But we need financial business models. They are compatible with this new way of doing things, right? So these are called circular business models So for example, we can lease building products in systems instead of buying them Like we already do for example with solar panels So the manufacturer owns the product and provides maintenance and repair overtime, right? So when it's time to replace that building product the manufacturer will take it back and reuse or remanufacture And then lease to other buildings So how can we get there? What can policymakers do to help that? I'll present now a few enablers that were part of a research I did with building designers in the United States To understand the barriers for circular economy and building design and I'll focus on the solution here But the whole publication with complete list of challenges and opportunities Is going to be available as a supplementary material for this presentation So in a national level we need a shared vision of circular economy And we need an action plan that would inform in guide states and cities In developing their own local circular economy strategies like Jordan was presenting for Oregon, for example So in these plans, we also need clear targets in metrics and indicators to monitor our progress Here I brought three examples of circular economy action plans at different scales So we have Amsterdam, Australia and European India Some of these plans they are structured around the materials. So for example Australia has identified the main waste in resource streams like plastic, glass, paper and tires And they developed a circular economy plan around those materials The other two action plans developed their plans around different sectors like electronics packaging, food, textiles and construction But regardless of the way that we structure our action plan in the United States It is important to consider the intersections and the need for collaboration across scales, across sectors Across discipline and also the integration of top-down and bottom-up initiatives as well So one of the main challenges that I've identified in the United States is the lack of awareness and information about circular economy So for example, that includes not only construction stakeholders, but also the general public So it is critical to develop educational campaigns to raise awareness about circular economy And that can be done from K-12 education, like this example here in Italy on the left to university curricula and to industry training and certification programs So for example, we could require knowledge on circular economy and like design for the construction, for example For someone to get a professional engineer license, for example And another, sorry, I moved a little bit here So another critical education problem is that many stakeholders do not understand the difference between Circular economy strategies like we use and recycling, Jordan just talked a little bit about that So not all circular economy strategies will have the same environmental benefits, right? If you look at this famous diagram here in the left by the Elemah Carter Foundation What usually happens is the smaller the loop in this blue loops here They can see the smaller the loop the smaller the environmental impacts of the strategy usually So if we reuse the steel beam, for example in another building who have minimum environmental impacts with a transportation For instance, but when we recycle that being the recycling process to consume energy and create carbon emissions Much like what happens with glass So also the efficiency of recycling varies according to each material So less than 10% of plastics get recycled But for example, 98% of all structural steel is recycled back to new steel products without losing their physical properties So creating targets and policies that differentiate between reuse and recycling is key to harvest the full potential of circular economy So another very important thing we can do is to incorporate circular economy principles into public procurement Jordan also talked a little bit about that So the doc this document here on the right is a document from the European Commission That is also available to download with this presentation And it gives us some examples of how to create circular procurement models So I've mentioned a few examples before like circular business models that are based on breathing and take back systems There's also designed for disaster and we in the construction And the identification of materials like immaterial passports or in EPDs as well And here's an example in Amsterdam So they build a road The road will remain the property of the construction company So what happens is that the construction company will maintain this road And as a consequence of this business model, the maintenance condition will be managed more closely So likely the quality of this road and this road will be like will have higher quality and last longer And it's more likely that the materials can be upcycled at the end of its life cycle as well And so besides public procurement Beauty permits give the city authority right over what's built So that means that we can include targets for savage components So components that are reused from existing buildings in the building codes So here's some examples of common beauty materials on your in your labs Common beauty materials that can be reused from other buildings like brick wood glass Meadows insulation and Gibson. There's several others as well So reusing these materials should obviously come with safety considerations. That's important to mention So we have to make sure that these materials are free of hazardous chemical chemicals, for example And they have appropriate structural properties too And here we have a very important measure At a national level, which is to allocate federal funding to research and to development initiatives that focus on circular economy I was a part of a workshop for circular economy experts where our goal was to inform the national science foundation of research opportunities that should be funded Including specific strategies to the built environment and to other sectors as well This report that has the complete report will be available to download as well But here about some examples of some research that we need to be done So for example, creating innovative bio-based materials that can be biodegradable After after the life cycle and some technologies to disassemble existing buildings as well We have to develop the material passports technology, especially in combination with other technologies like internet of things and blockchain We have to develop like like Jordan said circular economy pilot project So we have to fund the pilot project. So we know what works and what needs future improvement In a very important one that I want to stress is that we have to map material flows and building component stocks So we understand what we have in our cities What kind of materials we have where they are where are they coming from and where they are going So for example, there is this research project that was done Um here that I brought for you as an example and why we don't have the material passports technology So we don't have the actual database knowing exactly where these materials are There are methods that we can use to estimate The material stocks and to map them. So what what does what good does it do to us? We can help connect demand and supply of these materials We know where they are and we know when we need them We know where they can come from so we can help close the loops that way and reuse them And today another big challenge that we have in the building environment is that many building codes and regulations they have They make strategies like adaptive reuse and using savage materials in buildings unfeasible So for example, so adaptive reuse is when you renovate an existing building for a different purpose So for example converting an old school building into a museum So some regulations make this unfeasible like there's standards for parking space high density Land use restrictions in zoning as well and some even some elements of fire codes for example so building Codes and these land use regulations need to be reviewed with circular economy and a reuse mind So we can eliminate this burden when it's safe and when it's possible to do so And finally it is critical to create fiscal incentives for the circular economy, right? So our construction industry is very risk averse and very resistant to change So creating economic conditions to encourage these changes is key to enable circular economy in the building environment um A swedish author has just proposed a circular economy taxation framework and I also Put this this his paper is going to be available for download as well So what he proposed is to create three different types of fiscal incentives over the products lifecycle, which would apply as well for building products So first in the material production stage, that would be a virgin material resource tax for the extraction of new materials So that would be just had to hire taxes on extraction of new materials These taxes can be applied to the manufacturers But also to the retailers and to the final consumers when we are talking about consumer goods And then we would have a reuse and repair tax relief That would he proposed that to encourage repair and reuse practices and also to make them more affordable and more available in our industry And then at the end of the the the products life, we would have a waste hierarchy tax Which is related to when back always talking about that we need different policies that differentiate between circular economy strategies This is exactly what the what he's proposing here So that means that the taxes would decrease progressively following the waste hierarchy So for example, there will be higher taxes for landfilling lower taxes for recycling And then zero taxes for any level above recycling like reuse and re-manufacturing for So this is what he proposes in this paper Um, and finally, I know that today's focus we are focusing today on carbon emissions and environmental impacts But we also need to make sure that circular economy policies are designed with social justice in mind and at its core So we need to promote for example, like Jordan mentioned as well training And building skills to the workforce now so they can adapt to this circular economy models and materials and techniques Um, and we also need to ensure that the circular economy models will employ decent labor conditions So we don't just repeat the same inequalities that we see today in the so-called linear economy We also need to enable the active participation of communities and the decision power of communities in the way that we design our buildings and our cities So for example, we need to be careful to avoid some unintended consequences Like environmental racism and gentrification when we make circular economy decisions So for example, when we decide which neighborhoods we are going to Renovate which infrastructure we're going to renovate and where our waste recovery facilities are going to be um The answer doesn't circular economy plan that I presented at the beginning It's a great example of a plan that was designed with this kind of social considerations as well Um, and that's what I had for today. I'll stop here and we can open for this session And I would just like to thank you again for having me here today A fabulous presentation fernanda. Thank you so much. Um fernanda you over in jordan I'll invite you to turn your uh video back on you mentioned lots of materials that you provided and just so everyone knows In addition to the archived webcast The slides that fernanda and jordan presented all of the materials that fernanda referenced the complementary materials are posted On the same briefing page. So when you're looking at her slides or jordan slides You don't have to go very far to get to those those other materials. So thanks for sharing those with us by the way Um, we are going to turn to questions. We have a solid 20 minutes, which is great If you have any questions in the audience and you'd like to send them to us with two options You can send us an email ask um The email address is ask at esi.org ask can also follow us on twitter at esi online Um, I'm going to ask um a couple questions Until we can start getting some from the audience My first question is something that both of you touched on but I'd like to give us an opportunity to do Maybe take another pass at it and that is what I'd like to um explore a little bit more about how recycling Differs from reduce and reuse. So conceptually, I think we all understand that definitionally Recycling is a different word. It means a different thing. But from an climate impacts perspective Could you explain a little bit more about why recycling is different and how it's different and how it might in some cases be suboptimal? And fernanda since you have your your mute button already off. Maybe we'll start with you and then we'll go back to jordan Okay, sounds good. Um, there's some research that already shows that despite us increasing the level of recycling and The massive materials that we are recycling we are still failing to reduce our carbon emissions in our industry. So We have enough evidence to say that recycling is not enough and like jordan and i was saying The main problem is when we reuse something say when you This is laptops that we're all using right now, right? So when you give it to your kid You're changing the user and you're keeping the function That's reusing you having no environmental impacts whatsoever unless like i don't know Your kid lives in another place. So you have some emissions when you drive this laptop To a kid, right? When you send it back to the store for a discount on a new one you are The store is probably going to go into remunufacturing your laptop, right? So they're going to change parts and issue a new warranty Um, so then someone else can buy it that has More increased impact because you know, you may need some new materials to new parts to compose that laptop But if you send it to recycling, uh, you know, it's going to be crushed and Some materials are going to be separated to be recycled Um, and we like jordan said we're going to have energy Um, we're going to spend a lot of energy doing this sometimes we're going to spend a lot of uh We're going to issue a lot of carbon emissions So it is it better than having a new one? Yes, it is better. Um, but at the same time it is it is Like to say like it's so optimal and we there's all the strategy that we can do that you have usually smaller Bigger benefits for the environment and I say usually because It's very important that we conduct life cycle assessment and actually quantify this environmental impact because Like he was saying with the the glass that varies from material to material. I'll let jordan talk to Thanks jordan Right that that was right on point and and I think one of my colleagues likes to sum sum it up and say Recycling is necessary, but insufficient And that you know when we look at a materials life cycle Most of the impacts are in producing that material and I think what confuses people is that when we look at ways to reduce production related impacts Getting more recycled content is one of those ways, right? But but it's not the only way and we talked about a bunch of other ways to to reduce the impacts of materials today Um, and I think fundamentally, you know, and we've done analyses that said well, what if We recycled 100 of the things coming through the municipal solid waste stream How much more would it would carbon emissions would we get and and it was incrementally small and and we know that You know, um, so we know that it has benefits. We know that it's a part of the solution Because there's so many other things around the recovery economy That are beneficial besides just the carbon impacts Um, we you know, we haven't talked about toxicity. We haven't really talked about jobs. We haven't Um, we haven't talked talked about local economies. And so so these are all important aspects of the recycling economy As well, and I think fundamentally We are just consuming materials at a pace far far faster than we could ever supply Through recovered feedstock. Um, so that's that's why we need different solutions Great. Thanks. That was very helpful. Um, and Jordan, I'm gonna stay with you for a response to this second question Then we'll turn to Fernanda for her comment. One of your slides you had this slide on the left hand side you had the tall yellow bar Representing sort of construction and then you had the two the light blue and the dark blue bars talking about standard performance and high performance building Something that our congressional audience hears a lot about is energy efficiency Which is a good thing. Um, very good thing. Um, how would you how would you recommend staff people think about Emissions embodied in building materials. How is that related to the energy efficiency of a building? And the building's energy consumption. Do you have any Trying to sort of relate what we've talked about today to something that I I know that they already hear a lot about It's very very important and I'm hopeful that you can help us make a connection there sure Yeah, absolutely. Um The way that building materials, I would say directly relate To the energy efficiency of a structure is is mainly through insulation materials Um and mechanical systems that we use to heat and cool our buildings And so, you know, we'll start with insulation materials The the type of insulation really does matter. Um, and um, we're becoming more and more aware of this You know, uh, especially, uh, you know, we we used to use a lot of foam on buildings this this extruded polystyrene foam And it it was a great great product for a couple of different reasons. I had great insulative value It would easily insulate our buildings But then we use we learned that, you know, the blowing agents that the actual chemicals that we use to manufacture this foam Um, uh, and and the chemicals that is actually embodied in some of the foam that can be released over time Has a super high global warming potential and that when these these chemicals are released They trap a lot of heat and so you were going through a lot of effort to insulate your building But what you didn't realize is that it was going to take you 30 to 40 years Just to make up for the impacts of those materials before you started seeing any of those energy efficiency games So number one, um insulation matters and there's a bunch of different impacts Thankfully, we've seen the the blowing agents being used in the insulation community coming down a lot in the last five to 10 years Which is great. Um, so insulation matters quite a bit Regarding efficiency and then I would say that Additionally, like there's a lot of electrification going on in the building world right now And when we electrify our buildings To lower the carbon footprint of our energy consumption and also use energy more efficiently These are all good reasons to electrify our buildings We're also able to use, you know Solar panels on the roof and renewables to offset energy One of the issues we see happening with with electrification is that we're using heat pumps Again that have refrigerants that which are materials that have high global warming potential. And so we've seen federal legislation our federal federal work coming out on that over the last six months around refrigerants, which is great news I think there's there's a lot more that we could be doing in that arena As well. So so those are sort of very direct ways that materials meet efficiency And then we also have, you know Different ways about you know shape and structure and orientation of the building Which fernanda probably as an architect probably knows a lot more about than than I do. So I'll I'll stop there That was super helpful and fernanda i'll turn it over to you for your response Yeah, I have little to to add to that actually it was a very good explanation Um, I had the same the same comments about insulation and how some materials that Even like when we reuse some kind of system, for example If we reuse a silk framing system that has the continuous insulation I did a research on that and we found that the impacts of the reuse can be undermined by the The environmental impacts of the insulation. So that's something that we have to consider as well how to close loops for these materials and One thing that I can talk about a little bit is how circular business models can help us Say tie tie the loose end. So for example We can have a high efficiency imagine that the city needs a high efficiency I don't know roof structure a roof system because it also, you know It also impacts a lot in the energy efficiency in the building So imagine that we need this in public buildings, but it's expensive the new technology that it's For example zinc roof sticking extremely expensive What circular business models can do is that you can leave this material You can still harvest the environment the environmental benefits over the life cycle for say for having a high energy efficiency in the building But since you're leaving it you have lower upfront cost So you can actually invest in energy efficiency and save funds to invest in other technologies You know anything else that you're needing and then at the end of the life cycle the manufacturer would take this material back Back to using other buildings as well. So that way you can have both a high energy efficiency building and We can rest assure that our materials are going to be reused at the end of the life cycle as well So we are also taking care of the embodied impacts Fabulous, thank you so much for that Next question I'm going to challenge you to look ahead and help us understand Sort of where the next big opportunities might be either policy opportunities or technology opportunities That would help us reduce the carbon footprint of the building materials. We choose to use and Jordan, maybe I'll go back to you for this one and then we'll hear from fernanda Hmm big picture question um well, I I think I mean I what I love about this field is that there's there's so many materials and so many opportunities and so um, one of the things that I've been excited about Recently, um, is is thinking a little bit more about both natural building materials and um When we use Plants like trees or straw or other things for for building, you know thinking about how we can match carbon cycles in buildings to what what we see in the natural environment and You know, it's it's kind of crazy sometimes that we we grow things like trees for 40 years um, and then you know a a lot of the the byproduct of lumber manufacturing is Put to very short-term products like like like paper and pulp and um those we lose that carbon in in less than five years So so how you know, why would we be growing something for 40 and then losing it in five? And so I think we need to be doing some Larger work on the landscape level about how carbon flows through some of the materials that that we that we Work on I'm really excited. Um about newer technologies You know back to sort of more the industrial side of it in concrete and steel, you know, we're seeing a lot of um a lot of interesting ways To you know, we talked about glass puzzle on and concrete How to use natural pozzolans how to just use less cement. There's new cement chemistries there's a ton of There's there's a ton of things happening with carbon sequestering aggregates And and how we actually sequester carbon within the product itself You know, uh, so so that is happening with concrete. There's there's new power technologies being thought of in the steel industry So these are some of the things that I'm excited about from sort of a materials standpoint um, I think that from a policy standpoint one of the things I'm really excited about is You know, uh, both federal and state levels putting out demand for lower carbon products and we can do that through policies like buy clean And um that that is really helpful because if if no one's there to buy it Um, then we're not getting the signal to the market that that we want it And so I think government plays a role there and we also play Sort of an untapped role in investing more in in north american industry Because there's a lot that we can be be producing and be proud of here That um that I think is untapped Great. Thank you. Fernanda. What policies technologies do you see on the horizon that? um, make you especially optimistic Yes, um So one of the things that I had in mind was covered by jordan, which is material innovation and especially bio-based materials But also there's a huge Problem slash opportunity that we have to think about which is what are we going to do with where we are? to have Um, what about all these buildings that we have that were not designed to be taken apart? How do we map and reuse these materials and disassemble this material? So Beauty disaster we technique That that can actually help us Bring this materials apart that would not design for that. Uh, and also the whole Remember the material passports technology that is placing digital tags in the beauty components So we have this database that we can sort of match the client and How are we going to do that for the existing beauty? So there's some research going on about existing beauty Especially specifically for existing beauty To apply this material passports and to access these materials and to actually know what we already have And it's going to get better Especially because now we have a beauty information modeling and some design tools that will help us Have the accurate information of all we have in our buildings as they are designed But we need also to look at what we already have here And see what destination this can We can give to this and another thing that I think it's critical Besides biobased materials is to increase the durability of our materials as well because we see we we're seeing What one of the architects that I interviewed called the Walmart effect, which means we are producing cheap mass producing cheap building products And building systems for for example developers that don't believe they don't have a Long-term interest in the beauty So their procurement decisions, whatever material they select to their designs They don't keep in mind, you know, how it's going to be the durability of the material What destination damage to you because what are you going to do? They're going to buy the beauty and they're going to sell the beauty at some point So this ownership In fact, also how we make decisions and we need to understand the whole decision making science is another big opportunity to apply to our industry and see How we make design decisions in how we can actually encourage circular economy, so I think I cover some Hopefully that doesn't get like too confused No, it was it was not at all. It was great. Um, can I could I add one more thing to what Fernanda said? Of course, and I that was that was that was great and on point and one of the other Policies that I'm excited about that tied into where you just ended was Extending the responsibility of products to the manufacturers that are making them through product stewardship You know, we we see a lot of um product stewardship policies that are basically extended producer responsibility, right? Where it's an electronic recycling program at the end of a product's life cycle So that's a great place to start, right? But we're seeing more policies around the country Start to have manufacturers take responsibility over the entire life cycle of their product And they're going to be way more incentivized to reduce the impacts upstream of production and figure out how to more Strictly use these products when they're responsible over the life cycle. So I'm really encouraged to see more policies like that as well That's great. That's something that we covered back on april 20th in our um our First recycling um rethinking recycle reduce and reuse briefing. It was really interesting. Um We are getting close to the end But I do have one more question and jordan this actually kind of builds on what you were just talking about Which is sort of the policy side of things So you've described between you and finanda. You've described State local even international non u.s initiatives Um, what are some things the federal government could do better to encourage? Either innovation or the kinds of pilot programs that you've talked about around building material reuse Um, what are some things the federal government can do that would help those? Initiatives be more successful. Maybe reach scale faster and help us get out of the the situation that we find ourselves in right now And jordan, I'll I'll start with you since you ended on policy and then we'll give finanda the last word Sure, I'll be pretty brief. Uh, I've said it a few times now But supporting by clean legislation at the federal level that requires e pd's For certain building materials really puts the demand out there Um that we want low carbon products Um, let's think of e pd's like efficiency labels, right? Like like the energy star label Um, we need to see more programs and funding for organizations like epa and others to be able to collect publicly available life cycle information including Being a data repository um to have more trust and confidence in this data when we start implementing Far and wide I also think the the federal government could play a larger role in Not just providing the demand but in providing some of the the actual funding for innovation Um within industry and also take more responsibility at a federal level for product stewardship Um, like like we've seen a recently with um, you know reuse and repair Where there's been a bit of a surge on a federal level from that point. So Uh, those are a few ideas Thanks, and fernanda over to you. You get the last word What are some things that we could do at the federal level to encourage the great work that's being done at the state and local level? I went to that. Um once again, uh got clear circular economy That we can communicate clearly with goals and targets and strategies that would help us allow not only like Allow different states and different cities policies But also allow policies that are not directly related to to to build environment and to building materials But affect building materials as well. So if we have that from a top-down level like a clear shared goal That we could all move towards that's very important. And also I would add um collaboration platforms and creating platforms for discussion of circular economy that Allow different stakeholders to collaborate. So the the most successful circular economy strategy that I've seen involves a Network of stakeholders That are really connected in some levels in several of those are virtual platforms And I think right now we are all expressing that so Creating this this hubs and this platform so we can collaborate and discuss an exchange ideas between researchers between NGOs policymakers designers Community so we need the input of everyone So I think that those will be my two The sense and this one great Thank you so much. Um, this was such an interesting briefing. Um, and I really really appreciate Jordan your expertise Fernandez your expertise Thanks for sharing your presentation materials and all the additional resources It was a real pleasure learning from you today As a reminder to our audience everything you've just heard And all the things where Fernandez was referring to and slides and all that it's all available at www.eside.org Thank you very much to our audience. I saw I know we had a lot of people online today including a lot of staff So I thank you very much for joining us. I know it's a busy time. It's getting to be crunch time in washington and These are really important issues and we're going to be back tomorrow Looking at plastics and climate impacts of plastics. We're going to be back on friday Looking at climate impacts of food waste. So we've got a really great series and Fernandez and jordan couldn't think of a better way to kick it off. So thank you so much Wanted to just very briefly share a couple takeaways That I thought were especially interesting one. I love the idea of thinking of recycling as a process As much as it is a solution. It's I think jordan you were saying one of your colleagues says it's Necessary but not sufficient and we have to remember that it has a greenhouse gas emissions impact The discussion about natural materials is Very promising it's something we think a lot about mass timber across laminated timber for instance something that we Have covered previously this year and I think you know the message on energy efficiency is that you know We make choices in building materials and that has an impact on efficiency and vice versa And we there are ways we can you know make gains on both sides. We just have to be mindful of it So, um, thanks very much for for helping me kind of Reach those insights today really appreciate it. Um, we I mentioned this this slide that's up right now This is just a glimpse of our our week. I hope everyone will join us back tomorrow At one o'clock for climate consequences of plastics and then on the 10th friday reducing emissions by reducing food waste Um, I would like to close by thanking everyone at team. Yes. I who made today possible dan O'Brien. I'm rila port Um, uh, Alison Davis and the johnson Anna McGinn amber totter offs of Anna Bertrand and Isabella clips Thank you so much for everything you've done today behind the scenes to make today a big success Um, the last slide that we have is a survey Um, if you have two minutes, we really appreciate your feedback. Um, we read every response We do our best to incorporate your feedback into our programming if you had any issues with technology Or if you felt like your comments weren't getting through on time Please let us know we'll always try to do better if you have any ideas for briefing topics We'd be happy to hear those too. Um, but we really take your feedback seriously We will go ahead and wrap it. Sorry for going a couple minutes over the top of the hour I hope everyone has a great rest of your wednesday And I hope even more that we'll see you back tomorrow at one o'clock for climate consequences of plastics Take care. Have a great afternoon