Abstract
The impact that European and French legislation have on the circular economy implementation between market-driven incentives and state regulation emerges as the main challenge addressed in this chapter. Circular economy principles and the normative aspects of legislation constitute the best available frameworks to foresee how circular economy implementation will evolve in the building and construction sector in France. The Eiffage case study can be explained by the evolution of the normative arena composed by the current codes, environmental laws, roadmaps, and directives that frame the dynamic behavior of individual actors submitted to market pressures. A literature review of the current scientific and gray literature on circular economy in the building and construction sector was carried out in order to identify the required conditions to improve circularity in a normative way in France. Seven circular economy principles have been identified in the state of the art of Building and construction sector in France with emphasis on four of them: (1) Building lighter structures, (2) Waste reduction in the production process, (3) Intensive use of floor space, and (4) Extension of product life or recycling. Finally, we claim that the advantage of the normative approach implementation and analysis is to set the social agreement of compulsory foundation over which the market-driven initiatives and innovation could make the difference for the outstanding stakeholders of the economic sector.
Highlights
The building and construction (B&C) sector experiences challenging issues concerning the reduction of carbon footprint resulting from the GHG emissions and the materials consumption as part of the 2030 SDG objectives
Circular Economy in the French Building solution to maintain the value of products, materials and resources in the building and demolishing sectors for as long as possible, as evidenced by the studies published by Bilal et al (2020) and Akhimien et al (2021)
This chapter opens the door to analyse and discuss regulatory and prescriptive issues that challenge the role of the Circular Economy (CE) in the B&C sector (Norouzi et al, 2021), considering questions like: What constitutes attractive investments in a circular economy? How does the B&C sector explore these opportunities? How do policymakers engage cities toward resilient pathways? How do European and national norms transform the B&C sector and which dynamics govern the entry of new actors?
Summary
The building and construction (B&C) sector experiences challenging issues concerning the reduction of carbon footprint resulting from the GHG emissions and the materials consumption (cement and iron steel) as part of the 2030 SDG objectives. Local and global lockdowns led to labor shortages, while disruptions in supply chains slowed down delivery periods for construction sites This period has reinforced a number of existing trends (Uzzal Hossain et al, 2020) such as smart manufacturing shift, the global demand for bio-inspired infrastructure, light structure buildings, the growing building stock for renovation, the improvement of energy efficiency (a key driver to lift out people from energy poverty) or the strategies to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions like the more intensive use of the floor space and extending the product life length. This period accelerated the adoption of circular strategies (Leising et al, 2018) that reduce the waste in the B&C process, improving the use of high-quality and smart products especially through building modularity and adaptability, renovation and upgrade of buildings, building materials reuse or recycling infrastructure (Di Maio and Rem, 2015)
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