“If you recycle bad stuff, it gets caught in endless loops that keeps getting added to. This harms everyone. “

Inspiring evening of ideas for how to deal with materials in a circular economy – alchemia-nova’s second stand-up innovation event took place on 12th of June, 2019 at Impact Hub Vienna. How we see, distribute and set legal requirements for materials will be a major challenge for the next years.

“Less is more – this is the key to circular materials.” Johannes Kisser, alchemia-nova

Johannes Kisser, CEO of alchemia-nova research, made clear how necessary it is to start thinking in circles, like nature always has. The system has to change if we want to protect the environment for future generations. Labels try to protect us from wrong decisions when buying. Apps, like Codecheck, help us detect possible harmful ingredients when shopping for food and cosmetic products.

“It’s a way of thinking – not reducing harm but feeding the system with positive nutrients. “ Johannes Kisser, alchemia-nova

Why do we need that many additives and ingredients, when nature can create all shapes and forms with just 5 polymers? Once we start using positive lists instead of negative lists, we can ensure that our materials and products are save and can be kept in the loop.

“Nature’s principles should be implemented into products. You can build any kind of product with this mindset.” Johannes Kisser

A huge percentage of the waste is demolition waste. If we would build in a more modular way, using save materials that can be separated into it’s parts, we could save a lot of resources. One project which was presented and tries to consider that is PVadapt. A material that should be used are Oriented Strand Boards (OSB) from agricultural waste.

The second speaker Markus Meissner from BauKarussell is working exactly on the topic of reusing building materials. He talked about their work of dismantling buildings and the importance of coming up with a reuse- or recycling-process early enough.

“We need to change the value chain, how people run their businesses, we need to change the system.” Markus Meissner, Baukarussel

The Austrian Government made the commitment with the Energy- und Climate Strategy of Federal Government of Austria to reduce 36% of GHG emissions until 2030 (reference 2005). This is a lot. We have to act drastically to meet this goal. As the contruction is a big contributor, we need to start reusing, and not confuse it with recycling. Recycling is the worst of the best options. In order to be able to reuse materials from buildings, they need to be dismantlable and time is an important factor. To take the materials out you need time, you can not call one week before.

“We have to educate the new generation of builders that we must start thinking how we can reuse building materials later from the planning stage onwards. “ Markus Meissner

“The Form has to follow the planet” – Clemens Dus from designaustria spoke about responsibility regarding the design process of products – “Nature is an expert in attracting consumers and users”.

In his presentation you find the requirements for circular design. We have to start somewhere. Just do it! – “Doing the right things before doing things right.”, Clemens Dus.

Presentation slides:

Johannes Kisser PRESENTATION materials in a circular economy

Clemens Dus PRESENTATION design the change

Markus Meissner PRESENTATION BauKarussell