CIRCULAR ECONOMY IN THE BUILDING SECTOR THROUGH THE INNOVATION AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF NEW INDUSTRIAL STRATEGIES: THE ROLE OF THE INFORMATION IN THE MANAGEMENT OF BY-PRODUCTS AND WASTE

The paper deals with the results of a research whose aim is to propose some strategies for the achievement of cross-sectorial exchanges of pre-consumer waste/scraps according to a vision of circular economy. Focusing on the building sector, the research starts from the the awareness of the increasingly importance of the issue of scraps/waste, coming from manufacturing activities, within the context of the European environmental policies dealing with eco-innovation, circular economy and industrial ecology. The reasearch has been carried out in accordance with the lines drawn by the Directive 2008/98/CE on waste. The recent Commission Communication COM (2014)398 "Towards a circular economy: a zero waste program for Europe", clearly expresses the approach of the European Union and tries to frame the issue of waste in a broader scenario of policies and strategies for the environment, closely related to the objectives of economic and social growth and innovation of production processes and consumption models. The presented research is centered on the role of information, starting from the assumption that the economic-productive circular model, mentioned by COM (2014)398, implies the rethinking of production and consumption processes according to a model of interconnected phases, in which materials, products and waste can be used in a waterfall approach, with cross-sectorial exchanges from one phase to another. The assumed hypothesis is that the development of databases, common to several sectors, concerning the part of scraps/wastes, that can be considered as a secondary raw material for other sectors, is the initial condition for the implementation of systematic and integrated innovations of production, market and consumption models. According to these assumptions, the paper proposes an information platform structure, able to collect data on scraps and waste flowing from different sectors, in a context of defined geographical areas. In particular, the outcome are: the identification of the most productive sectors (in terms of quantity and quality of production scraps) whose waste are potential secondary raw materials and by-products to be used for the construction sector, and the definition of those data, useful for carrying out LCA evaluations, to be collected from the territory and georeferenced through the use of GIS.