Sustainable Procedures for the Recycling of Waste Building Materials: The Creative Recycling of Window Frames

Gianni Di Giovanni and Eleonora Laurini ()
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Gianni Di Giovanni: Department of Civil, Building-Architectural and Environmental Engineering, University of L’Aquila, Via Giovanni Gronchi 18—Pile Industrial Zone, 67100 L’Aquila, Italy
Eleonora Laurini: Department of Civil, Building-Architectural and Environmental Engineering, University of L’Aquila, Via Giovanni Gronchi 18—Pile Industrial Zone, 67100 L’Aquila, Italy

Sustainability, 2025, vol. 17, issue 5, 1-18

Abstract: Upcycling is identified as a process of the transformation of waste materials to which it is possible to give a value of artistic or environmental quality. To date, the greatest use of upcycling can be found in the design, art and fashion sectors. As in other sectors, one of the biggest challenges in the construction industry in the future is the search for new ways to reuse discarded materials. In this sense, upcycling is a new technique for the recovery of removed waste but with a much lower use of energy and resources than the regeneration of recycled material. With respect to these issues, the aim of this paper is to present the results of a design experimentation aimed at defining methodologies and tools for the reuse of building components from the decommissioning or renovation processes of existing buildings, with an approach that integrates both the disassembling and the re-assembling of construction elements, in line with the sustainable development and climate neutrality goals that the European Union aims to achieve by 2050. The methodology used made use of a field experiment by means of the creation of a prototype that made it possible to evaluate the results of the study which, if on the one hand made it possible to define an appropriate procedure for upcycling, on the other hand highlighted how these procedures save energy and reduce the emission of CO 2 in the environment. In this specific case, the experimentation gave the following results: energy savings 2038.92 kWh; CO 2 reduction 641.80 kg compared to a similar intervention from scratch. Therefore, the definition of a replicable and scalable operational process for the upcycling activity applied to architecture allows, by means of the reuse of those building materials and construction elements that still have a useful life, and which can, therefore, be used in the field of architecture, for a profitable contribution to the development of sustainable procedures in the field of architecture and the circular economy.

Keywords: upcycling; sustainable development; circular economy; reuse; LCA (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
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