Waste to building material: a starting resource list

A short list of sources worth reading if you want to look further into turning waste into building material. Each entry says what you will find, who it is useful for, where it applies, who produced it and any commercial interest. All were checked on 8 November 2026. Checked means we read the source and compared the facts we quote. It does not mean we tested a product or independently verified a company's claims. Linking to an organisation is not an endorsement. It supports the feature From waste to building material: what is working, and what could Australia do next?.

Examples to learn from

Rotor DC, Brussels: a reuse business

• Rotor DC, About us
• What you will find: how an employee-owned cooperative dismantles, prepares and resells salvaged building components, and how its teams, principles and site are organised.
• Useful for: homeowners, builders, designers and community groups curious about how a reuse business runs.
• Where it applies: Brussels, Belgium. The practical lessons carry further, but local rules and markets differ.
• Produced by: Rotor DC, which sells the materials, so it has a commercial interest. Page not dated.
• Limits of our check: it describes the business in its own words and gives no sales or tonnage figures.

Superuse Studios: designing with reclaimed materials

• Ellen MacArthur Foundation case study (5 October 2021)
• What you will find: how a Dutch design practice built Villa Welpeloo (2005) from salvaged materials, and how its Harvest Map tool shows nearby pools of materials.
• Useful for: designers, planners and community groups interested in local material sourcing.
• Where it applies: the Netherlands. The regional mapping idea applies more widely.
• Produced by: the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, a circular economy charity, quoting Superuse. Superuse has a commercial interest as a design practice.
• Limits of our check: the percentages (about 60% salvaged material, about 90% of 180 projects) are the studio's own figures as reported in the case study.

saveBOARD: panels from recovered packaging

• GECA certification listing, Multi-Use panel and saveBOARD, products
• What you will find: what the Multi-Use panel is made from and the certification it holds, and the manufacturer's list of products and applications, including internal linings, external bracing and ceiling tiles.
• Useful for: builders, designers and specifiers weighing a recycled-content panel.
• Where it applies: Australia, with international distribution stated.
• Produced by: the certification listing is by Good Environmental Choice Australia (GECA). The products page is by saveBOARD, which sells the products.
• Limits of our check: GECA is an environmental certification, specific to the product listed. It is not building-code approval and does not show a product is suitable for any particular use. Check each product's technical documentation, test results and installed cost for your use.

Green Ceramics: waste glass and textiles into ceramics

• UNSW / 360info, How to build a circular economy (12 June 2024) and UNSW SMaRT Centre, Green Ceramics
• What you will find: how small "MICROfactories" turn glass, textiles and mattresses into ceramics, where the material has been used, and the Shoalhaven facility's stated capacity of around 450 tonnes a year.
• Useful for: councils, researchers, designers and community groups looking at local processing of hard-to-recycle waste.
• Where it applies: New South Wales, Australia.
• Produced by: UNSW, whose researchers developed the process and describe their own work, with council and industry partners.
• Limits of our check: the 450 tonnes is a stated capacity, not measured output, and we have not confirmed current operation. "Non-toxic" and "high performance" are the developer's descriptions with no test data on the page. Uses described are mainly interior and decorative.

Precious Plastic: small-scale plastic recycling

• Euronews, DIY plastic recycling made easy (20 July 2025)
• What you will find: what the open-source Precious Plastic community provides, examples of community recycling projects, and its limits.
• Useful for: community groups, makers and schools.
• Where it applies: worldwide.
• Produced by: Euronews, a news organisation.
• Limits of our check: the figures (more than 2,000 initiatives in 56 countries, about 1,400 tonnes recycled in a year) are as reported there. Items made this way should not be assumed to meet building requirements.

The numbers

Australian waste and resource recovery

• DCCEEW, National Waste and Resource Recovery Report 2026 (22 September 2026, covering 2024–25)
• What you will find: 67.5% resource recovery, 64.1% recycling, and 31.1 million tonnes of construction and demolition waste generated with 25.2 million tonnes recycled.
• Useful for: anyone who wants the national picture.
• Where it applies: Australia.
• Produced by: the Australian Government Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water.
• Limits of our check: construction and demolition figures are for the report's source stream, which is separate from its "building and demolition materials" category. Resource recovery includes energy recovery such as landfill-gas capture and anaerobic digestion as well as thermal processes, so it is broader than recycling.

Australia's circularity rate and resource-recovery target

• ABS, Circular economy
• What you will find: 66% resource recovery in 2022–23 (up from 61% in 2016–17), the target of 80% by 2030, and a circularity rate of around 4.3% in 2024.
• Useful for: readers who want an official overview.
• Where it applies: Australia.
• Produced by: the Australian Bureau of Statistics, drawing on DCCEEW and informed by CSIRO research.
• Limits of our check: we did not check the underlying datasets, and the 2022–23 and 2024–25 recovery figures may not be calculated identically.

The Netherlands' circular material use rate

• Eurostat, circular material use rate (19 November 2025)
• What you will find: 32.7% for the Netherlands, the highest in the EU, and 12.2% for the EU, in 2024.
• Useful for: readers comparing international approaches.
• Where it applies: EU countries.
• Produced by: Eurostat, the EU's statistical office.
• Limits of our check: we have not compared Eurostat's method with the ABS circularity rate. Our editorial assessment: do not compare 32.7% with Australia's 4.3% until the accounting methods and boundaries are checked, and neither should be compared with a waste recovery rate, which measures a different thing.

About this list

Compiled by Circular Abundance from sources checked on 8 November 2026. Further sources, including videos, will be added only after we have reviewed them. This is an early version, published so that it can be corrected and improved. See the Research Notebook for how we label work in progress.