Circular construction is rapidly emerging as a must-have for the built environment and its supply chain. Despite this, many businesses confuse it with recycling. According to Dr Helen Bailey, Founder and Director of The Driven Company Associates, that misunderstanding risks obscuring the scale of transformation required. “Circularity is about retaining the value of resources,” Helen explains. “It’s keeping them in use for as long as possible, eliminating waste and pollution, and regenerating systems where we can. It’s about maintaining materials at their highest level of utility and value.”

Dr Miles Watkins, a former Holcim executive and longtime mineral products sustainability specialist, agrees. He argues that circular construction begins long before a product reaches the end of its life. “Circularity is about the upfront decision-making,” he says. “What are we doing? Do we need to do it at all? How do we minimise material consumption, maximise longevity and ensure that when something reaches its end of life, we can create another life for it? Recycling plays a role, but it is only one component of circularity.” That distinction is becoming increasingly important as construction faces mounting pressure to reduce waste, increase resource efficiency and improve resilience in the face of supply chain uncertainty.

Beyond Recycling

Helen, President of the Institute of Asphalt Technology, highlights the widely recognised ‘9R’ framework to illustrate the hierarchy of circularity. The model begins with Refuse, Rethink and Reduce before progressing through Reuse, Repair, Refurbish, Remanufacture and Repurpose. Recycling appears at the bottom of the list, with Recover the final ‘R’. “When people say, ‘We’re doing a great job because we’re recycling a lot,’ that’s only part of the story,” she emphasises. “Recycling sits much closer to the linear economy than many people realise.”

The problem, according to Miles, is that conventional recycling often destroys value instead of preserving it. In construction, high-quality materials frequently become lower-value products through downcycling. Crushed concrete, for example, may ultimately be used as fill material rather than retaining its original performance characteristics. “We’re taking expensive, high-quality materials and turning them into lower-value products,” Miles laments. “That’s not really circularity. It’s downcycling.” Miles stresses that true circular construction seeks to retain as much of the original value as possible. Achieving this requires designers, clients and contractors to think differently at the beginning of a project’s life rather than at its demolition stage. “We’re dealing today with the sins of the past,” he continues. “Lots of things were never designed for longevity, disassembly or future reuse. We now have huge quantities of materials that are difficult to recover effectively because nobody considered circularity when they were first created.”

Construction’s circularity challenge

Neither Helen, who is also the Deputy Chair of the Institute of Quarrying, nor Miles believe construction can yet claim leadership in the circular economy.

“The built environment is still quite poor at circularity,” says Miles. “Not because the industry lacks capability, but because most of our assets weren’t designed with future lifecycles in mind.”

Roads, buildings and infrastructure systems are typically complex combinations of materials that can be difficult to separate and recover. Mixed materials create technical barriers that reduce reuse opportunities and often lead to lower-value recycling outcomes.

Improving circularity therefore requires a significant shift in design philosophy. “If the design is better in the first place,” Miles notes, “you can harvest much more value downstream.”

Helen adds that the industry must begin looking at materials as resources rather than products or waste streams. “We’re starting to see recovered materials viewed as resources rather than waste,” she explains. “The next step is understanding what those materials actually are. Instead of simply having a pile of rock, we need to understand its chemistry, its properties and where those resources can be used most effectively.”

The business model problem

Perhaps the biggest obstacle to circular construction is not technology but business structure. “The technology largely exists,” says Miles. “What we’re really dealing with are business model challenges, financial challenges, talent challenges and cultural challenges.”

Miles explains that traditional construction business models reward the extraction and sale of virgin materials. Circularity, by contrast, encourages the retention, recovery and continual reuse of existing materials. This shift could fundamentally alter how businesses operate. Miles cites examples from other sectors. Rolls-Royce no longer simply sells aircraft engines. Instead, it sells power by the hour. Train manufacturers increasingly offer service-based models. Photocopier providers often charge per page rather than selling machines outright.

These approaches encourage companies to retain ownership and responsibility for assets over longer periods. Construction could eventually move in a similar direction. “We may start seeing organisations thinking less about selling materials and more about managing assets and resources,” Miles suggests. Local authorities, for example, already own millions of tonnes of asphalt, concrete and aggregates embedded within their infrastructure networks. Circular approaches could treat those materials as future resource banks rather than demolition waste.

A new value in old materials

Growing customer demand for recycled content is already changing market dynamics. Miles highlights recycled asphalt (RA) as a clear example. Historically viewed as waste, RA is now increasingly sought after because clients specify minimum recycled content levels in new asphalt mixtures. “People are beginning to compete for access to quality secondary materials,” he notes. “In some cases, obtaining suitable recycled feedstock is becoming more important than securing virgin material.” This shift could eventually transform the industry’s relationship with infrastructure assets.

Rather than focusing exclusively on quarry reserves, companies may increasingly value access to future secondary resources. The concept is still emerging, but Miles believes it signals an important change in thinking.

Material passports & intelligence

One key enabler of circular construction may be data. Helen and Miles emphasise the importance of tracking materials throughout their lifecycles through digital systems and material passports. At present, the industry often lacks detailed information about what materials were used, where they are located and what additives they contain. That creates challenges when materials are eventually recovered.

“If we don’t know what’s in a material, we can’t make informed decisions about reusing it,” Helen says. Material passports address this problem by creating digital records that accompany products and assets throughout their useful lives. The concept has already gained traction in building construction through Building Information Management (BIM), where digital twins increasingly record detailed information about structures and components.

Miles expects similar approaches to expand into infrastructure. “If local authorities have a comprehensive inventory of their assets, they can understand not only how many roads or bridges they own, but how much aggregate, bitumen, cement and other resources those assets contain.” Miles and Helen highlight how artificial intelligence may further accelerate these opportunities by helping organisations analyse vast quantities of asset data and identify reuse possibilities that would otherwise remain hidden.

Helen highlights how UK-based technology companies are now starting to look at providing digital carbon tracking and quality control software for the road construction and maintenance sector using embeddable technology and smartphone apps to calculate carbon emissions and store data.

The policy push

Legislation is likely to be another major driver of circular construction. The EU’s developing Circular Economy Act has attracted significant attention, and Helen believes its influence will eventually extend beyond Europe. “Inevitably, because of harmonised product standards and international trade, many of these requirements are likely to influence UK practice as well,” she says.

Material passports and digital product information requirements are expected to feature prominently in future regulations. Meanwhile, circularity is already appearing in planning policy across parts of the UK.

Miles notes that many planning authorities increasingly require developers to demonstrate the use of recycled materials or justify why such materials cannot be used. Some cities, particularly London, are adopting increasingly demanding requirements around refurbishment, reuse and material recovery. “Policy is already moving in this direction,” says Miles. “The question isn’t really whether it will happen. It’s how quickly it will happen.”

Resource security & economic resilience

Interestingly, Helen and Miles believe circularity’s importance now extends beyond environmental objectives.

Recent geopolitical disruptions have highlighted the vulnerability of global supply chains and increased interest in domestic resource security. “Circularity isn’t just about carbon,” Helen stresses. “It’s also about resource resilience, resource security and competitiveness.” By keeping valuable materials circulating within national and regional economies, circular construction can reduce dependence on imported resources and increase supply chain stability.

Miles argues that recent global trade tensions have inadvertently strengthened the case for circularity. “Governments are increasingly asking what resources they already have and how they can make better use of them,” he says. That shift could support broader efforts to reindustrialise domestic economies while reducing exposure to international market volatility.

Measuring what matters

Another challenge for the sector is measurement. Although many companies report recycled-content figures, Helen argues that these metrics often fail to capture genuine circularity. “We don’t really have proper circularity measurements,” she says. “If we don’t measure the gap, how do we know whether we’re closing it?”

Understanding whether materials are being reused, upcycled, downcycled or simply diverted from landfill remains difficult. Improved tracking, better data and more sophisticated performance indicators will be essential if the industry is to demonstrate meaningful progress.

Turning ambition into action

The Driven Company Associates has already been helping organisations navigate this transition. Examples include material and waste analysis programmes, carbon literacy training and strategic advisory work focused on resource efficiency and circular business models.

The consultancy has also supported initiatives such as the CERCOM (Circular Economy in Road Construction and Maintenance) project, a major European research programme investigating circular economy approaches within road construction and maintenance.

For Helen and Miles, however, the most important work often involves challenging assumptions among senior decision-makers. “Our role is often to have difficult conversations,” Miles says. “To ask whether what worked yesterday will still work tomorrow.”

What success looks like

Neither Helen nor Miles expects overnight transformation. Construction’s long asset lives and capital-intensive nature mean progress will inevitably be gradual. However, both see a clear destination which has two fundamental components:

For Miles, success will arrive when previously used materials become the primary source of value creation, not an afterthought. “When the balance tips,” he says, “and we’re creating more from previously used materials than from virgin resources, that’s a significant milestone.”

Helen defines success slightly differently. “For me, success is when recovered materials are no longer viewed as waste,” she says. “They’re recognised as valuable resources and assets. Once that becomes business as usual, we’ll know we’ve made real progress.”

Both believe that the goal should be zero waste and progress should be measured through continual improvement. “We don’t need perfection immediately,” emphasises Miles. “If we can halve waste, then halve it again and halve it again, that’s meaningful progress.” The message from both experts is clear. Circular construction is no longer a niche environmental concept. It represents a fundamental rethinking of how materials are designed, specified, managed and valued. The transition will be complex and at times uncomfortable. Yet as regulation evolves, resource pressures intensify, and business models adapt, circularity increasingly looks less like a choice and more like construction’s next major evolution.