EPA selects GIS for $1.3M grant to advance adoption of circular economy in construction

Like a nutrition label on a cereal box, an environmental product declaration (EPD) lists a product’s impacts on the environment. Two researchers—Kim Bawden and Brian Hilton—from Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) aim to determine how EPDs can be used to underscore the climate benefits of construction products made with materials recovered from waste streams.

What you need to know:

• The RIT research will be funded by a grant nearing $1.3-million from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), part of $160 million being invested through the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022.
• Manufacturing construction materials accounts for 15 percent of global greenhouse gases—a circular economy approach to producing these essential products could offset as much as 38 percent of those emissions.
• Bawden and Hilton will work with two New York State companies, KLAW Industries LLC and Pioneer Millworks Inc., to develop EPDs that reflect the sustainability of their products. These small manufacturers use recovered glass to replace cement in concrete and reclaimed wood to offset virgin supplies, respectively.
• The researchers will evaluate the methods used to assess a product’s environmental impacts when creating an EPD to ascertain how well they account for feedstocks recovered from “waste.”
• The study will give the two businesses greater market confidence by developing EPDs tailored to their unique products. Long-term, the results will contribute to publicly available data, providing a benchmark for construction materials made by applying circular economy principles.  

In July, a proposal by two circular economy specialists at RIT, Kim Bawden and Brian Hilton, was selected for a $1.3-million award by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) grant program, “Reducing Embodied Greenhouse Gas Emissions for Construction Materials and Products.” The project is one of 38 that will be funded by the $160-million initiative to support efforts to address climate pollution caused by the manufacture of construction materials, part of the Biden Administration’s 2022 Inflation Reduction Act.

Building circular economy—literally  

“The shift to a circular approach to making construction materials can reduce waste to landfill, conserve natural resources, and lower embodied carbon,” explained Bawden, who is the technical program manager of life cycle assessment at GIS. “Thanks to the EPA, we can show what that looks like in the real world.”

The built environment is one of the most impactful sectors of the economy in terms of resource use and greenhouse gas emissions. In the United States alone, billions of tons of concrete, asphalt, steel, glass, and more are produced to build and maintain buildings and infrastructure, accounting for more than 15 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions. Yet, according to the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, a circular economy for construction materials could reduce that impact by 38 percent. New research from the Golisano Institute for Sustainability (GIS) at Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) represents an important step towards realizing that goal.

Through the research, Bawden and Hilton aim to advance current knowledge of whether a common product label for measuring sustainability—the environmental product declaration (EPD)—fully captures circularity.

“There are a variety of methods used to support different business models and different industry sectors. Not only will we produce new EPDs, but we also hope to contribute to standardizing the modeling process for circular products,” said Hilton, who is the sustainable design technical program manager at GIS.

Closing the gap 

The third-party-verified EPD label is a norm for evaluating and sourcing building products in line with decarbonization goals. Compliant with the International Standards Organization (ISO), an EPD is especially important in attaining LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certification.

EPDs, as they stand, may fall short when it comes to circular products because they were not originally designed to account for the impacts—avoided or created—of using “waste” materials instead of virgin or recycled feedstock in a product. To remedy this, Bawden and Hilton want to learn if the conventional scope and depth of a life cycle assessment (LCA)—the methodology for quantifying the environmental impacts of a product used to create EPDs—can be expanded or if an entirely new modeling approach is needed.

As LCA practitioners, Bawden and Hilton will first evaluate how current LCA practices account for circularity today. Then they will use what they learn to identify gaps that could be filled to create an EPD practice that capably represents circular-economy products.

Building knowledge 

Bawden and Hilton will begin by working with two New York State companies that use materials recovered from the market. They will complete LCAs of a cement-replacement product made with post-consumer glass introduced by KLAW Industries LLC and a building solution that uses reclaimed wood made by Pioneer Millworks Inc.

“The award from the EPA and our continued work with RIT will be a significant step for KLAW, allowing us to expand our carbon impact,” explained Jacob Kumpon, co-founder and chief operating officer of KLAW Industries. “This partnership will advance circular economy solutions for the concrete industry.”

Michele Caryl, an acquisition manager at Pioneer Millworks, noted that the project will give her company “enhanced visibility to better identify opportunities to improve our recycled wood products through lower embodied greenhouse gases.”  

The researchers will conduct the LCAs to determine, step by step, the current possibilities and limitations of the full process for creating EPDs from a circularity perspective. Importantly, they will evaluate public guidelines for conducting LCAs specifically for construction materials, a set of procedures and requirements known as product category rules (PCRs). Through the project, Bawden and Hilton seek to learn whether the entire ecosystem for creating an EPD—which include LCAs and PCRs as well as life cycle inventories (LCIs)—is adequate for capturing the environmental benefits of circular-economy products or not.

The project represents an important milestone towards building knowledge, and ultimately consensus, about how circularity should be measured and quantified at the product level. Work is scheduled to begin in early 2025.

“It is an honor for GIS to continue supporting the EPA in its critical mission,” said Nabil Nasr, associate provost and director of GIS. “This project has the potential to accelerate the adoption of circular economy principles in construction, creating a more sustainable future for the built environment.”