We are nearing the end of our journey through the “waste complex.” Our final topic: Reboot Architecture—circular construction for a sustainable future for our cities. After all, the majority of a building’s environmental impact stems from material consumption. The construction sector generates an enormous amount of unnecessary waste. Wouldn’t it make sense to use materials that are just as durable as conventional ones but can be reused multiple times? And might it even be possible to construct new buildings from “waste”? Yes—the foundation for this is the circular economy, which makes it possible to meet growing resource demands in a lasting and sustainable way. After all, waste doesn’t always belong in a landfill. For example, old wood panels or metals can be repurposed to create new buildings, with clay serving as a versatile “binder.” The “Natural Building Lab” (NBL), a university-affiliated institution at the Technical University of Berlin, carries out such projects. The NBL was founded in 2017 as a research group for “Structural Design and Climate-Responsive Architecture” under the direction of Prof. Eike Roswag-Klinge.

The Natural Building Lab operates as part of a transdisciplinary network that carries out projects applicable to teaching, research, and practice. Working with students is particularly close to their hearts.

The team consists mainly of architects, but is expanded through collaborations with civil engineers, graphic design firms, landscape architects, and communication designers. Their projects clearly focus on natural building materials, clay, and urban timber construction. Most of these materials are sourced from demolished buildings or spaces, because nothing should be thrown away unnecessarily.

ZU/FLUCHT Open-Air Exhibition:

The ZU/FLUCHT project exemplifies the work of the NBL and was carried out as a master’s thesis project with 20 students from the Technical University of Berlin. In collaboration with the Exilmuseum Berlin Foundation, old Tempohome containers (housing for refugees) were converted and redesigned into an extraordinary entrance area for the Exilmuseum, which is currently under construction. The former living spaces were modified using existing materials such as metals (especially sheet metal), wool, and bonded materials. The project aims to stimulate discussion, particularly on the topics of material waste and reuse in the construction sector. The goal was to demonstrate what can be done with old containers, which are often manufactured and then discarded after their primary use. From June to October 2021, the temporary open-air exhibition was on view at Anhalter Bahnhof in Berlin. The planning, construction, and implementation spanned 18 months and were carried out over the course of two semesters at the Technical University of Berlin.

Especially in this era of sustainability, such projects are generating significant public interest, including from the State of Berlin. Circular construction is trending, and “I have a feeling this is becoming the new ‘sustainability,’” says Matthew Crabbe, a doctoral candidate at the NBL. The definition of circular construction is as follows: The proper, circular use of building materials and resources, as well as ensuring they have a long life cycle, promotes cascading use. This involves using renewable, sustainable, or reusable building materials that are climate- and environmentally friendly. The clear focus is on reducing waste and emissions.

Circular construction is supported by the “Cradle to Cradle” (C2C) approach developed in the 1990s by Michael Braungart (a German chemist) and McDonough (an American architect). This approach calls for a comprehensive and consistent circular economy in which all resources are kept within a cycle. The three principles of Cradle to Cradle (C2C) are: waste = nutrient, or in other words, everything is designed as a resource for something else; use energy from renewable sources; and promote diversity.

The goal is for the Rhine-Ruhr region to become a global hub for circular value creation (“Circular Valley”) in the coming years. Circular buildings (structures made from materials and products selected for their reusability) are not yet widespread in North Rhine-Westphalia, with the exception of the Kreislaufhaus at Zollverein in Essen. The new circular administrative building for the RAG Foundation and RAG AG is located at the Zollverein UNESCO World Heritage Site in Essen. The building was designed and constructed by kadawittfeldarchitektur. The materials were selected based on their health and environmental impacts as well as their recyclability. At the end of the building’s lifespan, it is intended to serve as a source of raw materials. The green roofs, urban gardening areas, and animal habitats are also designed to be permanently sustainable. Additionally, “The Cradle,” a seven-story hybrid wood office building, is currently under construction in Düsseldorf’s Medienhafen. The carbon footprint was reduced during construction thanks to the use of wood, a renewable resource. The creation of office spaces also provides economic added value.

We’d like to thank the Theaterallianz Mühlheim an der Ruhr for letting us take over their Instagram channel! We had a lot of fun doing it, and we hope we were able to share new information about waste and the landscape with our readers. So always remember: reuse, reduce, recycle! Not everything you no longer need belongs in the trash! 😉

Writer: Stephanie Stiem

*Starting in January 2022, lala.ruhr will be taking over the Instagram account of vier.ruhr—the alliance of Mülheim theaters—for three weeks. Our theme: the waste complex. We’re taking you on a digital journey through the region and beyond—to places where something is created from waste or where people work with what we colloquially refer to as “trash.” We invite you to think about the urban landscape of the Ruhr Metropolis in circular terms and to discover all materials as part of cycles. We’re featuring the company HeimatERBE, which, among other things, focuses on transforming areas previously viewed by the public as “useless” and enables commercial enterprises to operate in an environmentally neutral way.

vier.ruhr is the theater alliance comprising Theater an der Ruhr, the Mülheim Theater Festival “Stücke,” and Ringlokschuppen Ruhr. Funded as part of the NEUE WEGE program by the Ministry of Culture and Science of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia in collaboration with the NRWKULTURsekretariat.

Everyone in the world produces waste: the banana peel as organic waste, the mobile phone battery as electronic waste, the cardboard box as waste paper or the plastic bag as a recycled product. Especially in times of the Corona pandemic, much more garbage/waste was produced in general, which, moreover, could often only be incinerated. The reason for this: Corona viruses potentially adhering to it.

In science, too, many research series are underway that deal with the avoidance of waste and the reuse of materials. Consequently, our cities have an “urban metabolism”, which refers to the transformation of materials and energy in a city.[1]
The term was coined by the German philosopher and economist Karl Marx, as early as 1844 in relation to environmental sociology. Marx made it clear that we humans are dependent on nature and damage it with our economic processes [2]. The basic concept of urban metabolism then goes back to the US engineer Abel Wolman in 1965, who for the first time considered the city as an ecosystem in its own right with its material and energy flows [3].

Since the 19th century, cities have become increasingly important because they were and are the engine of economic growth. Cities are an open system that consumes energy, fuels, raw materials, water, food and air. After these resources have been used, waste, pollutants or even waste water are produced, unless they are tied up in infrastructures. The larger a city becomes – whether with the expansion of its area or the increase in population – the higher the demand for resources/materials increases. Due to different factors, however, each city must be considered as an individual. Thus, in order to be able to determine the urban metabolism, the three most common methods are used: Material Flow Analysis, Ecological Footprint Adaptation and Life Cycle Assessment (see blog post on HeimatERBE). The focus is always on the inputs and outputs of a city and the resulting impact on humanity and the environment.

Solutions and realistic goals are needed to tackle the problems created in cities: more efficient use of local resources, use of recycling systems including waste prevention and management strategies, provision of clean air and recreational green spaces, reduction of greenhouse gas emissions and urban planning (climate) adaptation strategies. It also aims to end huge exports of waste abroad and use local recycling and closed-loop incinerators. New product designs help to make reusable materials more attractive.
In many places, projects on the topic of “waste” are already being set up in schools to raise awareness of “waste”. Whether it is picking up rubbish or learning how to separate it properly, everything has an effect on our environment. The data collected in this way can benefit science. Through comprehensive mapping, processes for waste avoidance or recycling can be improved.

For a global overview of the different urban metabolic processes, the “Metabolism of Cities” platform is a good place to start. Take a look, discover and accumulate knowledge. Another literature tip: The page of the format “Quarks und Co” on the topic of waste.

Text author: Stephanie Stiehm

lala.ruhr takes over the Instagram account of vier.ruhr, the alliance of Mülheim theatres, for three weeks with the takeover in January 2022. Our theme: the rubbish complex. We’ll take you on a digital journey through the region and beyond – to places where something is created from rubbish or where work is done with what we colloquially call it. We invite you to also think of the urban landscape of the Metropole Ruhr in a circular way and to discover all materials as part of cycles. We present the HeimatERBE company because, among other things, it takes care of the conversion of areas that were previously considered “useless” in the public perception and enables business enterprises to act in an environmentally neutral way.
vier.ruhr is the theatre alliance of Theater an der Ruhr, Mülheim Theatre Days “Stücke” and Ringlokschuppen Ruhr. Funded within the framework of NEUE WEGE by the Ministry of Culture and Science of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia in cooperation with the NRWKULTURsekretariat.

Sources:
[1] Oke, T. R.; Mills, G.; Christen, A.; Voogt, J. A. (2017): Urban climates. Cambridge. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781139016476
[2] Bleher, D.; Öko-Institut e.V.. (2017): Resource impact of urban metabolism Results of WP 1.1 within the UFOPLAN project FKZ: 3715 75 122 0. Darmstadt.
[3] Sanches, T. L.; Santos Bento, N. V. (2020): Urban Metabolism: A Tool to Accelerate the Transition to a Circular Economy. In: Filho, W. L.; Azul, A. M.; Brandli, L.; Özuyar, P. G.; Wall, T. (eds.): Sustainable Cities and Communities. 860-867. https://link.springer.com/referenceworkentry/10.1007%2F978-3-319-95717-3_117

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)

Holiday trips, exotic foods and things that end up in the corner immediately afterwards are part of our everyday consumer behaviour. This has a negative impact on our environment: important resources are consumed, habitats are degraded or destroyed and species extinction is on the rise. So how can the damage caused in this way be avoided and compensated for in order to achieve an ecological, environmentally sound way of life in the long term?

lala.ruhr cooperates with the Impact Factory, a start-up platform for social entrepreneurship, and has exchanged ideas here with the innovative Essen-based company HeimatERBE GmbH.

HeimatERBE GmbH was founded together with its sister company greenzero.me 2020 by Dr. Dirk Gratzel after he had made it his mission to record and compensate for all the environmental damage he had caused in his life. To this end, he was in contact with numerous scientists and was finally the first person to determine his complete life eco-balance and the resulting damage to the environment together with the TU Berlin and the TU Braunschweig – this corresponds to what greenzero.me does today. Together with other experts from the fields of forestry, ecology, biology and nature conservation, he then developed a strategy to compensate for the environmental damage – this is now the work of HeimatERBE GmbH. With the help of the two sister companies, business enterprises in the B2B model now have the opportunity to make their organisation, their service or their products environmentally neutral.

HeimatERBE now has seven employees in the fields of ecology, economy and technology. The urban and landscape ecologist Madlen Sprenger (M.Sc.) was a guest at lala.ruhr and told us about the idea behind HeimatERBE’s corporate principle. In the interview with our intern Stephanie Stiehm, the compensation of environmental damage and the HeimatERBE principle were discussed:

What exactly do you do at HeimatERBE? What is your mission?

The goal of HeimatERBE is to compensate for negative environmental impacts. To this end, we are currently restoring old industrial sites from the Ruhr region to as good an ecological condition as possible, in which they then provide (secondary) habitats for diverse plant and animal species. Natural as well as cultural landscape biotopes thus ensure the creation of new ecosystem services as well as the preservation and improvement of existing ones*. The creation of new biodiversity and the protection of the climate and people are the top priorities for HeimatERBE. HeimatERBE thus creates added value for nature and for society. They offer this added value to companies to compensate for their negative environmental impacts from services or products, for example.

*”Ecosystem services are the services provided by nature to humans through habitats and living organisms such as animals and plants. Ecosystem services provide the basis for basic human needs, such as access to water and food. Functioning ecosystems depend on an interplay of numerous organisms, such as primary producers (e.g. plants), herbivores, carnivores, destructors (decomposers), pollinators and pathogens. Biodiversity with all its levels is therefore considered the essential cornerstone of ecosystem services” [1].

 What is the HeimatERBE principle? What components does it consist of?

The HeimatERBE principle describes the process that leads to achieving environmental neutrality. At the beginning of each project, the life cycle assessment of a person, organisation, product or service must be calculated. This analysis determines all environmental impacts from production to disposal, including the manufacture of consumer goods. (This balancing is standardised in DIN EN ISO 14040/44.) The results are then monetarised – i.e. converted into environmental costs according to the standard of the Federal Environment Agency. The environmental costs are a purely monetary amount which we receive from our life cycle assessor (e.g. greenzero.me). It describes the actual environmental impacts. This then results in the environmental value, which creates a balance between the environmental costs. The environmental value represents the amount of money needed to compensate for the harmful environmental impacts. What we have to spend financially for the production of efficient and functional ecosystems – i.e. the production costs up to “biotope maturity”, corresponds to the environmental value.

How can HeimatERBE then work with it?

Life cycle assessment and monetisation are of course always aimed at causing some damage. Of course, it is important to reduce this damage as much as possible in the process first. HeimatERBE only offers compensation for such processes that have already been optimised. What we then do is reinvest these identified environmental costs. The environmental value we create is the reflection of the environmental costs. This is the momentum where environmental neutrality is achieved because the costs are reinvested at this point in the process and the externalities are internalised. The customer has to pay one-to-one for the compensation of the environmental costs. By monitoring the development status, HeimatERBE can check whether the goals of its compensation measures, which we describe in a development plan beforehand, are being achieved. For HeimatERBE, the focus is on environmental neutrality. In addition to the greenhouse effect caused by the emission of climate-altering gases, components such as acidification, overfertilisation (eutrophication), ozone pollution on the ground (summer smog) and destruction of the (protective) ozone layer in the stratosphere are also included. Compensation strengthens the protected goods of biodiversity, climate and human health. The terms explained above, such as life cycle assessment, monetarisation, environmental value and ecological enhancement performance, are elementary components for achieving environmental neutrality.

What are your current projects and what are your next plans?

A current example is the former Ewald 5 shaft site in Herten. There, an old forge stands on the site as a very special feature. The area was still relatively heavily used as a construction site until August 2021. Today, calm has returned and we decided to convert the building into a “species protection forge” – we had already found traces of (previous) colonisation by a barn owl and bats, so the rededication was perfect. This means that the whole building is for species protection only. We have closed the building completely to humans and have only created entry points for animals, especially for bats and for birds that live in the building. In addition, we have created nesting aids and roosting structures on the façade and inside the building, which can be used as habitats for the animals. But there are also small entrances for ground-dwelling small mammals and co, which can also find shelter there. However, this building only makes up a small part of the 8 ha area. In other parts of the site, HeimatERBE will also carry out unsealing and deconstruction measures, remove rubbish, preserve and optimise existing biotopes (e.g. convert afforested stands into native forest communities or convert damp open land into extensive cultural landscape use) and create new habitat types or encourage/allow their development (e.g. fields with pioneer and spontaneous vegetation, flower-rich herbaceous borders, wild fruit stands).

Another very interesting site is the Kurl 3 area in Lünen. There, for example, goldenrod is relatively widespread and actually determines the whole character of the area. At first we thought it would probably make the most sense to remove the soil. But in contact with NABU from Unna, it turned out that various orchids were already present there. Now we are in the process of gently converting this area so that we can preserve the orchid populations.

A very special project, which far exceeds our previous work in complexity and scope, is currently underway in Duisburg-Ruhrort. Together with the Haniel company, we at HeimatERBE and greenzero.me have set ourselves the task of transforming the district into the world’s first environmentally neutral neighbourhood by 2029. There will be a lot of work to do with the city, local businesses, interest groups and, of course, the citizens of Ruhrort. It will be a challenging project that has great potential for the district, the whole city of Duisburg and the Ruhr region.

Further purchases of degraded and devastated areas, which do not necessarily have to be former industrial sites and in the Ruhr area, are planned in order to be able to meet the growing demand for holistic, multi-dimensional and local compensation, according to our previous working methods.

All further information about the current projects and much more can be found on the HeimatERBE website. There is also a film explaining further details.

* lala.ruhr takes over the Instagram account of vier.ruhr, the alliance of Mülheim theatres, for three weeks with the takeover in January 2022. Our theme: the rubbish complex. We’ll take you on a digital journey through the region and beyond – to places where something is created from rubbish or where work is done with what we colloquially call it. We invite you to also think of the urban landscape of the Metropole Ruhr in a circular way and to discover all materials as part of cycles. We present the HeimatERBE company because, among other things, it takes care of the conversion of areas that were previously considered “useless” in the public perception and enables business enterprises to act in an environmentally neutral way.

Author: Stephanie Stiehm

Sources:
[1] Umweltdachverband (n.d.): Ökosystemleistungen – von der Natur kostenlos erbracht https://www.umweltdachverband.at/themen/naturschutz/biodiversitaet/oekosystemleistungen/

As is well known, the Ruhr region has a history spanning decades of lignite and hard coal mining. As early as the 19th century, the economic focus was on the iron and steel industry. The coal and steel industry, including many workers from abroad, drove significant urban growth at that time. Due to the coal crisis in the 20th century, mining operations were ultimately shut down in 2018, after a full 150 years of mining.

So what now? Where do our current and future materials come from today? And what does the use of secondary raw materials look like? A 100-square-meter apartment alone contains 7,500 kg of metals, and 1.6 billion cell phones contain around 38 metric tons of gold. One potential solution: the circular economy as a source of raw materials. “Urban mining” can be translated as “urban mining.” Until recently, the term was primarily associated with the excavation of old landfills. However, the central aspect of the urban mining approach is recycling – the reuse of materials. Urban mining helps reduce raw material shortages, as well as the massive import of raw materials and the emission of harmful carbon dioxide (CO₂).

Rainer Weichbrodt is considered one of the pioneers of the concept of urban mining in our region; he has been actively promoting the topic since 2008 and, together with several partners, launched the “Urban Mining Congress” in 2010, which was last held in Dortmund in 2018.

He also founded Urban Mining e.V., based in Essen. Weichbrodt is the managing partner of Management Institut Dortmund GmbH (MID) and likes to refer to urban mining as the “new mining industry of the Ruhr region.” His reasons for this are as follows: First, the high rate of urbanization, including the high population density in the region. With over 5 million people, the Ruhr region can be described as one large city. Second, in Weichbrodt’s view, a structural transformation driven by environmental technologies could be established here in the Ruhr region because this is precisely where academic expertise is at its highest. In this context, he likes to refer to the term “Urban Mining Valley.” Weichbrodt: “My vision is to drive this forward – that is, to promote technologies that will allow us to position ourselves as a business hub and set global trends. In this way, we naturally also strengthen and improve the Ruhr region as a business hub.”

“For me, urban mining is about harnessing and recognizing that raw materials are increasingly shifting from deposits in the earth to deposits in cities. More and more materials are being used from the earth. Copper, for example, is a material that already exists in infrastructure on a larger scale today than as a resource in the earth, and many other materials will follow a similar path in the future, especially rare metals. So I no longer have the raw materials in the ground, but rather in use—and in a variety of ways due to urbanization in the city—and that’s exactly why we need to make use of this resource in the future. In this context, people are viewed not only as consumers but also as producers of valuable resources.” His appeal: “It’s up to everyone to dispose of valuable metals and raw materials properly in order to support the environment, society, and our own economy,” Weichbrodt summarizes his definition.

As early as the 1960s, the American-Canadian urban and architectural critic Jane Jacobs referred to cities as mines. Mines in the sense that a great deal of raw materials are incorporated into urban infrastructure, which can later be reused. But consumer goods such as electrical appliances, wind turbines, solar panels, cars, as well as buildings and waste in landfills are also our secondary raw materials today. Urban mining involves the following processes: “prospecting, exploration, development, and extraction of anthropogenic deposits through to the processing of the recovered secondary raw materials.” The four pillars of the urban mining strategy: Design for Urban Mining, Resource Cadastre, Urban Prospecting, and Resource Recovery.

To conclude the discussion on urban mining, here is the formal definition from the Federal Environment Agency: “Urban mining is the integrated management of anthropogenic deposits with the aim of recovering secondary raw materials from durable goods and waste deposits. It does not matter whether the goods are still in active use and will only be released in the foreseeable future, or whether they have already reached the end of their useful life.”

If you’re looking for a simple and concise explanation of the term “urban mining,” you’ll find it in this video.

Text author: Stephanie Stiehm

* Starting with the takeover in January 2022, lala.ruhr will be taking over the Instagram account of vier.ruhr – the alliance of Mülheim’s theaters – for three weeks. Our theme: the “trash complex.” We’ll take you on a digital journey through the region and beyond – to places where something is created from trash or where people work with what we colloquially call “trash.” We invite you to think about the urban landscape of the Ruhr Metropolis in circular terms and to discover all materials as part of cycles. For us, trash is fundamentally a resource and a treasure trove for new things – not simply waste. lala.ruhr defines waste as the raw material of the future! For this reason, you’ll also find several blog posts this month on the topic of the “Waste Complex.” This first blog post on “Urban Mining” explores the idea that the Ruhr region can be not only a consumer but also a sustainable resource.

vier.ruhr is the theater alliance comprising Theater an der Ruhr, the Mülheim Theater Days “Stücke,” and Ringlokschuppen Ruhr. Funded as part of the NEUE WEGE program by the Ministry of Culture and Science of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia in cooperation with the NRWKULTURsekretariat.

Sources:

Federal Agency for Civic Education (bpb) (2019): Mining in the Ruhr. From Industrialization to the Coal Crisis. https://www.bpb.de/apuz/283262/der-ruhrbergbau-von-der-industrialisierung-bis-zur-kohlenkrise#footnode10-10

Deutschlandfunk Kultur (2018): Hard Coal Mining in the Ruhr Region. The End of an Era. https://www.deutschlandfunkkultur.de/steinkohle-bergbau-im-ruhrgebiet-schicht-im-schacht-100.html

Management Institut Dortmund GmbH (MID) (2010): Urban Mining—Environmental Experts from the Ruhr Region Are Driving the Issue Forward. http://www.mi-dortmund.de/urban-mining-umweltexperten-aus-dem-ruhrgebiet-treiben-das-thema-an/

Management Institut Dortmund GmbH (MID) (2012): The URBAN MINING® Award 2012 http://www.mi-dortmund.de/der-urban-mining%c2%ae-award-2012/

Federal Environment Agency (UBA) (2017): Urban Mining. https://www.umweltbundesamt.de/themen/abfall-ressourcen/abfallwirtschaft/urban-mining#strategie-zur-kreislaufwirtschaft-

Urban Mining Design (n.d.): Urban Mining. Basic Information for Sustainability Novices. https://www.urban-mining-design.de/index.php?id=basisinformationen-fuer-laien