Rethinking recurring waste flows: Creating material cycles by identifying new use cases for idle materials

Abstract

This article presents Collaborative Material Workshops (CMW), aimed at identifying new use cases for commercial waste materials waste materials, which are continuously being generated and have valuable technical properties. With the assumption that such materials habe a high re-use potential, they are defined here as idle material streams. The objective of CMW is to identify scalable and feasible applications for the re-use of idle material streams and to communicate those results to commercial adopters. In cooperation with a local secondary material initiative and a project-related NGO, TU Berlin researchers have investigated the idle materials “printing blankets” and “aluminium composite panels” in two CMWs. Both materials combine valuable technical properties, a short use phase, and poor recyclability. The resulting two CMWs included 1) detailed background research, 2) physical material testing and 3) experimental CMW with material-related experts. With a special focus on the construction industry, the erticle discusses the barriers of identifying scalable and feasible new use cases for idle materials through the method of CMW.