Circular economy has been so popular for years in the academic world, but its presence in our commercial world is discouraging. According to a McKinsey report, materials circularity has shrunk by more than 10 percentage points, from 31 percent in 2018 to 20 percent in 2023. Hong Kong as a highly developed and urbanized city does not act as a role model for a green world city. The recent setback of introducing MSW charging and delaying it to 1 August 2024 is a vivid example. As an active market participant in the green business, we highly recommend the following initiatives for creating circular and green buildings in Hong Kong.
The first one is to establish metrics for measuring building green performance. Needless to say, resource management is a key issue. Resources including energy, water and material usage are the first priority to reduce, reuse and recycle. The easiest way is to improve the guidelines on usage, and reduce wastage. It would be wise to change to install more energy efficient tools and systems, such as LED lights and smart automotive sensors. Small budgets could enhance the building environment and save some money. To increase owners’ participation rate, subsidies and incentives for those landlords who are willing to participate in green practices. To foster successful measurement, the BELUCKS framework could surely help!
Separating recyclable stuff from demolition waste is important to turn buildings to be circular. The smallest but most common way is to collect used papers, plastic bottles and cans for recycling. The crucial one is to analyze and record building components such as cement, metal, and wood for future dissembly or deconstruction. The fact is that the usage of these raw construction materials contributes around one-third of total CO2 emissions in the world. This is to solve the problem from the origin. The first step is to record the components of existing buildings and a tailor-made disassembling method for each building. Belucks team will provide a clear building identity for facilities enhancement and future deconstruction.
To understand the life cycle of buildings, property owners and managers could choose the right strategies to minimize resource consumption and emissions. For buildings older than 30 years, regular repair and maintenance could be a big burden. By carrying out a big green retrofitting or gentrification, it could be a one-off big expense, in exchange for coming non-stop defects fixing. Mandatory window and building inspection schemes in Hong Kong could cause a continuous repair and maintenance burden. Landlords could save money by acting in advance before government or supervision bodies take action. Belucks team help clients to check their real estate comprehensively and provide professional advice on building care and enhancement to save legal compliance costs.
In the digital transformation age, operation and management data from sensors could provide insightful data for managers to improve indoor environment quality, energy efficiency, and maintenance efficiency. By applying a digital-twin BIM system, landlords could keep a good record of their building operation performance. Clear display of the building infrastructure could help engineers to spot and locate problems more accurately. The BIM system would help a lot with project construction progress and waste control. Digital Material Passport could help supply chain management and make it much easier for future deconstruction. We have solid cooperation with a BIM system supplier who develops a sophisticated applications by combining BIM, AI and DMP. Clients could get assured and reliable BIM services from us with discounts.
Circular building in Hong Kong is a complex topic involving material physics, mechanical engineering, AI technologies, bioinformatics and etc. Belucks team with experts from inter-disciplines could help our clients to tackle this challenge.