What´s new about Material Passports and do they drive the Circular Economy?

At JRA, we have been pioneers for retrofit for over 30 years and champion material we use. We love the deep dive into the history of an existing asset, the paper trawl through archive information to understand the asset we are working with, to identify its shortcoming and more importantly opportunities. Teasing out its potential to understand where we can add the most value with minimum intervention. And also to find that hidden gem of information that can inspire the reimagination of an often unloved and underperforming building.

Often record information will need to be verified by testing and investigations on site. It is accepted practice that this is time consuming and often requires more upfront cost than a new build. The upfront investment is often significant, but directly linked to a tangible return on investment. This is the norm, but is there a better way?

Our Associate Director Anja Schellenbauer joined an insightful panel discussion at the Surface Design Show and delved in to the vital role of material passports in sustainability.

From Anja´s point of view, a lot of what architects do already amounts to material passporting. Material libraries, specifications, O&M manuals are essentially all material passports and have a vital role to play at the outset of a building´s second life. However, these processes are bespoke every time and financially only viable for high value items. For individual smaller products, the cost associated with testing, reconditioning and re-warranting are disproportionate. What is needed here is economy of scale, repetition and standardised modules. But even with raised access floors and ceiling tiles the circular economy wheel is creaking. Many manufacturers have return schemes to recondition and resell their products, as it is morally the right thing to do and there is demand from an ever more sophisticated market, even though financially this offering is only cost neutral at best. Those isolated circularity loops are a really good starting point and vitally important to highlight the untapped potential. But a wider infrastructure is needed to enable mainstream reuse of materials. Imagine an Oxfam shop merged with a John Lewis department store and pre-owned items sitting on shelves next to brand-new products. With material passports containing all the required information to establish its value, re-used items are acknowledged as equal in value to new products.

The wider infrastructure that is needed will require a shared platform, a common format and an agreed set of information to streamline those processes all stakeholders in the value chain contribute to. The manufacturer, the architect, the contractor and also the facilities manager all have a role in compiling and maintaining passports. From a list of ingredients, performance and environmental impact, warranty and end of life options provided by the manufacturer in the first instance. The collation of a project-specific set passports by the architect, change updates and testing information by the contractor. Going beyond what is currently the norm, the FM team have a part in maintaining a service record. Very similar to the Golden Thread.

The paradigm shift is that Material Passports set the intention for reuse at the outset, and not at the beginning of the re-use cycle. By mandating passporting in combination with a shared digital infrastructure, material passport will create an industry-wide joint circularity loop. So far the stumbling block of individual circularity efforts was the sporadic availability of material to feed the chain. Without a reliable material stream, the upfront investment remained largely speculative without immediate tangible benefits. But an industry-wide joined up approach will feed enough material into the chain and keep the wheel spinning to secure the supply chain for second life products.

So far the word “economy” in circular economy has been viewed as an oxymoron, but the shared platform for material passports of re-use material is the missing piece of the circular economy as a viable economic model. Material passports are vitally important as the key facilitator of the Circular Economy at scale.