Material Circularity at 100 New Bridge Street
THE CHALLENGE
The modern urban office space must provide high-quality, adaptable working environments whilst also meeting sustainability requirements and minimising embodied carbon. At 100 New Bridge Street, one of the critical focuses for our client is to achieve the highest standards of circularity through the retention of the existing structure and the reuse of materials where possible. The project is targeting 95% reuse, recovery, and recycling of construction waste and 91% retention of the reinforced concrete lift cores and 85% of the reinforced concrete walls.
The new high-performance facades, addition of solar panels and all-electric services will drastically reduce operational energy demands and enable the building to reach net zero carbon emissions. If that wasn’t enough, the project is also targeting BREEAM Outstanding and Well Platinum certification, ensuring the building embodies class-leading holistic sustainability and wellbeing principles.
THE APPROACH
To address this ambition for circularity, the project team, with input from the designers, clients, and supply chain, have developed a material re-use tracker and Cat-B circular economy roadmap to capture existing building materials proposed for re-use and provide specific recommendations. Key aspects include:
- Reuse of existing steelwork
- Retention of existing furniture, fixtures & equipment (FF&E) within the construction site accommodation with the remainder donated to charities
- Recycling of carpet tiles
- Repurposing of existing façade granite into internal wall cladding
- Salvaging existing CAT-A ceiling and floor tiles to be reused on other projects
Three façades will be reclad to significantly improve the thermal performance of the building alongside installation of the latest Building Energy Management Solutions (BEMS) to provide the best operational energy efficiency. The new building will provide high-quality tenant amenities, including extensive cycle parking, changing facilities, large terracing, and a pocket park to create a new best-in-class office building.
By adopting circularity approaches, we can make a meaningful and necessary contribution to reducing the embodied carbon of buildings – a vital step towards reducing our industry’s emissions. The aim to retain the existing structure and re-use as many materials as possible, reduces the quantity of new, raw materials required. To estimate our total carbon impacts and potential savings we used One Click LCA, a software allowing for life-cycle assessments of construction projects, to estimate the total carbon impacts throughout the project’s life. This reporting was split into; on-site re-use, re-use within the site welfare, and re-use off-site via donations.
In addition, the client team was keen to donate surplus items to local schools and charities. £3,835 worth of furniture, stationery and cleaning supplies were donated to two local charities, London National Park City and St Mungo's. We translated these community donations into carbon savings, with the materials donated equating to 4.24tCO2e. Our work with these local charities will continue as the project progresses.
In total, our carbon savings from these circular measures equates to 1,795.31 tCO₂e. This is a combination of façade reclamation, reuse of onsite materials and reuse of site welfare such as lockers, tables, and refrigerators.
In terms of social value creation, the value of donations and the time spent by the team in facilitating and delivering equipment created a positive net social value figure of over £23,000.
As we continue to embed circularity into our operations, this work demonstrates that significant carbon reduction can be realised across all parts of the structure and that responsible reuse of materials can provide lasting positive benefits for projects and their surrounding communities.
