Woodcircles is a four-year innovation project co-funded by the European Union that aims to develop circular and sustainable solutions for wood in construction. Its overall goal is to accelerate the green transition of the construction sector. Woodcircles is a multi-stakeholder collaboration between 20 leading European partners across the wood construction value chain.
The built environment is responsible for approximately 50% of all extracted materials and 35% of the EU’s total waste generation. The production of cement and steel alone account for about 15% of global greenhouse gas emissions.
By improving material efficiency and substituting non-renewable energy intensive materials with renewable materials, it is estimated that up to 80% of these emissions can be saved.
Woodcircles develops solutions for circular use of wood construction materials, to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, waste generation, and materials consumption.
Woodcircles develops various solutions to address circularity challenges in the wood construction industry. These include:
Upcycling of wood construction waste destined for incineration to new construction products.
Developing digital tools to map the materials available in the Urban Forest, meaning wood from existing buildings, constructions, and furniture.
Developing two new value chains for recycled wood: engineered wood products and insulation.
Prototyping and demonstrating an ‘Urban Sawmill’ facility to convert low-value, inhomogeneous wood construction waste into standardised, value-added products.
Designing a wood-based building system optimised for disassembly to enabling effecient re-use and recycling of wood construction materials in the future.
Producing a pilot demonstration building that will tour three European cities (Rotterdam, Tartu, and Turin).
Woodcircles will have the following expected impacts:
