Our shared understanding: a circular economy in the built environment

We need to transition to a circular economy if we are to solve our global systemic challenges: climate change mitigation and adaption, biodiversity loss and social equity. We won’t hit our net zero targets if we don’t. TransFIRe researchers from the University of Leeds recently contributed to “Our Shared Understanding”, a report put together by a panel of world-leading experts to explore the core concepts that inform the transition to a circular economy.   By holding these principles in common we can align policies, strategies and initiatives, enabling the built environment industries to work together across the globe to work together towards a common goal, with coordinated action. This report was launched at the World Circular Economy Forum 2023 and is aimed at policymakers, business leaders and future leaders in the built environment – both circular economy experts and non-experts. The launch event can be watched here. The call to [...]

2023-07-24T15:33:13+00:00July 24th, 2023|

Key performance indicators in sustainability reporting: what do we need to measure?

Sustainability reporting is a vital tool to provide information on an organisations’ social, economic, and environmental performance and is an essential way for organisations to demonstrate accountability to their various stakeholders.  But how do companies know which metrics or key performance indicators (KPIs) they should use? The TransFIRe project through its different Work Streams (WS) is addressing the need of identifying the most suitable metrics for the foundation industries (FI), by looking at different levels for measuring and reporting performance, ranging from the process level to factory level and eventually to the “beyond the fence” level (a system view, looking from the perspective of external stakeholders, including the surrounding community, and the environment). Figure 1 - Schematic representation of the different levels for measuring performance of FIs.   Process level metrics At a process level, TransFIRe researchers have created a framework to help the manufacturing industries identify the right [...]

2023-06-05T11:02:10+00:00May 16th, 2023|