The Circular Industries Talks are organized every second Wednesday at the Circular Industries Hub. In this edition, Tomer Fishman, Assistant professor of Industrial Ecology at Leiden University, talks how much our cities weigh. Curious for more? Take a look at the recording at the bottom of this page.
In most countries, there is almost no information on what buildings and cities are made of. While these emerging countries are exactly where most of the future growth will take place. And without data, you can't formulate policy."
Approximately half of the materials humans extract from nature every year are used for construction materials. Think of cement, concrete, steel and wood. Producing all these materials emits 15 percent of the annual greenhouse gases. How we construct buildings and what materials we use has a big impact on the environment. Local building material stock assessments has been growing rapidly.
However, a method to estimate the material stocks of buildings in high resolution and high detail while covering the entire world has remained elusive so far. This gap is especially prominent for the Global South. In this work we present a new high-resolution globe-encompassing assessment of the materials stocks and floor area of the buildings composing the cities, villages, and other settlements of the entire world.
Curious about the whole story? Listen to Tomer in the Circular Industries talks.
The Circular Industries talks
The goal of the Circular Industries talks is to share knowledge across Leiden, Delft and Erasmus and to complement and deepen the knowledge already available within the Circular Industries Hub. The talks are organized on Wednesday morning from 10:00 to 11:00. The talks are online (Microsoft Teams).