The Dutch government has published the circular economy goal, which aims to reduce 50% consumption of raw materials by 2030 and realize full circularity by 2050. The goal leads the promotion of sustainable development, particularly, on improving the resilience of the self-sufficient material supply chain in the Dutch economy. As one of the largest raw material consumers, the construction sector urgently demands a solution towards building circularity, which mainly indicates increasing the use of secondary materials and reducing demolition and construction waste. Accordingly, the municipality of Leiden takes the leading role of circular transition, and seeks a practical solution in the construction sector at the local scale.
The circular construction hub is brought out as an effective solution to the building material circularity transition. A series of conceptual development and a few pilot projects in Utrecht and Amsterdam were established, the effectiveness is proved by the promising results of transportation reduction, and recycling rate improvement.
Regardless numbers of the number of studies on the building material flow analysis and the development of the hubs in various forms, limited discussion of practical information for local hubs’ development is provided, and little quantitative analysis of the implementation of the circular construction hub was conducted. Decision-making for the intermediate steps in the transition towards building material circularity, therefore, has little referencing information.
Hence, this research proposes the main research question as: How will the circular construction hub support the transition of building material circularity in the cities of the Netherlands? In order to explore the formation and the influence of the circular construction hub in the city with the case study of Leiden. The research firstly specifies the formation of the hub by desk research; then quantifies the urban mining potential and handling capacity of the hub by Material Flow Analysis (MFA); then the suitability analysis of the hub’s location is provided by the Geographical Information System (GIS) based on the transportation emission (Kg CO2 eq).
The research aims to draw a comprehensive understanding of the metabolic characteristics of building material flows with the implementation of the circular construction hub, and provide a referencing value for the municipality’s decision-making on developing the hub in city Leiden, and further development in the cities of the Netherlands.
The estimation and calculation processes are provided as the following datasets, the corresponding methods are introduced in the thesis report, and the file introduction is provided on the first page of each spreadsheet.
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