Recyclinggerechtes Konstruieren im Stahlbau

Recyclable design in the field of steel construction.

Recyclable design and construction have been forming an inherent part of sustainability assessments and concepts in many fields of industrial manufacturing for quite some time now. While automobiles manufactured in Germany can be recycled up to 95%, the need to maintain valuable raw materials as well as avoiding waste due to building works on our built environment is completely disregarded in today's construction designs and works, even though building constructions form more than 50% of the worldwide consumption of resources and more than 50% of the mass waste volume. Recyclable design and construction in building industry is neither discussed at expert meetings nor taught at universities; we are also lacking satisfying selection of literature thereof. There might be a variety of reasons for this but in the end they are all unacceptable.
Due to its physical properties and the possible and usual joining techniques in the field of steel construction, this material is particularly suitable for a recyclable construction. Unfortunately there have not been developed any generally approved guidelines for recyclable designs and constructions in the field of steel construction so far. The present essay should serve to set up the basics for recyclable steel design and construction. Based on examples of selected projects, concrete proposals are shown for recyclable design and construction with steel.