This interactive workshop will explore why the principles of Reduce, Re-use, Recycle, Repurpose, and Replace are essential to lowering the environmental impact of buildings. The approach is in line with the GlobalABC Materials Hub’s  10 Whole Life Cycle Recommendations and particularly the Recommendations 8) Prioritise retrofitting, 9) Materials Circularity and 10) Design for Circularity. 

Framed around circular economy approaches in the built environment, the session will examine how smarter planning and design can fundamentally reduce raw material demand—prioritising resource efficiency, adaptive reuse of buildings and infrastructure, high-value deconstruction, reuse, and recycling, and innovative material substitution. It will highlight how lessons learned in one global region can be adapted and transferred to others, particularly Emerging Markets and Developing Economies (EMDE), where large-scale construction is expected to accelerate in the coming decades. Adequate circular housing will be highlighted as a key entry point to these efforts. 

Through a combination of expert inputs and interactive discussions, participants will engage with practical case studies, enabling policies, digital tools, financial mechanisms, and business models that support circular construction at scale. The workshop will also address regulatory and certification barriers, skills training and capacity needs, and the social and cultural dimensions of transformation. By fostering collaborative dialogue, the session aims to identify priority actions, key gaps, and potential solutions, contributing to the development of a shared roadmap for advancing resource-efficient, circular construction globally, with particular attention to EMDE-specific contexts.

Guiding Questions:

• How can circular economy principles fundamentally reduce material demand in the built environment?   What priority actions and key gaps are there based on experiences?
• What policies, regulatory tools, and financial instruments  need to be in place to scale the circularity of materials in construction? What are the game changing solutions, enablers, low hanging fruit?
• This workshop examines resource-efficient approaches to planning and design, prioritising reduced material use, reuse of buildings and infrastructure, and high-value material reuse and recycling. It explores policies, data tools, and financial mechanisms that enable circular construction and adaptive reuse at scale to do more with less.