Certifying reused materials
General description
All construction products in the European Union must be certified to be implemented in value chains to guarantee quality assurance and liability. Only then, they can be sold as a regular off-the-shelf product. In the case of reused, recycled, or upcycled building materials, this is usually done via an independent third party handling the certification process or through the producer’s warranties. It can be a lengthy and expensive process that is sometimes circumvented by making project-specific client delivery contracts. However, only proper certification will facilitate scaling.
Examples
Resource Rows
Copenhagen, Denmark
The architect points out that the barriers, which slow down the transformation towards a construction economy based on reused materials, are the lack of certification systems for such materials. Besides that, he sees a problem in the time- and investment-intensive nature of such construction projects including many stakeholders who have to share responsibility and coordination efforts. Since the materials used in reuse projects have previously been used in other buildings or come directly from the industry, their properties are well known, but this does not mean that the properties are readily documented. When a brick is taken from its origin and used in a new context, it must be treated as a completely new product. In order to incorporate waste materials into new buildings, The Lendager Group had to become a material producer to ensure a predictable flow of materials for the project.
CRCLR
Berlin, Germany
Quality inspection of the components was conducted internally by the team. It was therefore important to form a pool of experts with specific knowledge about the detailed components and requirements needed for reusability. The biggest challenges were fire protection (e.g. the doors) and structural requirements. This meant that the recertification took sometimes longer than expected. To conduct this step, coordination with the product’s manufacturers and specialised companies is essential. However, not many companies are willing to account for the liability of reuse components in a newly constructed building.