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The 4 indicators of the circular signature
Contribute to the fight against climate change
The carbon footprint is a measure of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. It calculates the carbon footprint of the production of the products making up the deposit(s) under consideration, from the extraction of raw materials to the final integration of the product, including all the intermediate manufacturing stages.
Product information is recorded in circular passports. Combined with the volume of products associated with such passports, it becomes possible to calculate the first indicator of the Circular Signature, globally or by categories of deposits considered, thanks to the myUpcyclea software.
Preserve Health and Indoor Air Quality
The degree of non-toxicity is based on Cradle to Cradle, the international label of the circular economy, and in particular on compliance with the “banned list” of banned products by the C2C Product Innovation Institute, the public body that pronounces product certification. The degree of non-toxicity distinguishes 4 categories:
- Healthy products: These products do not contain any CMR substances (Carcinogenic, Mutagenic, Reprotoxic) and their VOC emissions (Volatile Organic Compounds) are controlled for better indoor air quality,
- Controlled and Verified Toxicity Products: These products do not contain any C2C banned substances above the tolerated thresholds and this has been verified by an independent third party organization,
- Products with controlled toxicity not verified by a third party,
- Products of known or unknown toxicity.
Preserve resources through reuse and upcycling
The circularity indicator is the result of an operation taking into account both the previous lives of the materials constituting the deposits considered and the next possible uses for these deposits of used products. This indicator gives the following information:
- The rate of deposits with identified future uses,
- The rate of recycled or rapidly renewable materials incorporated into products,
- The degree of demountability of products and deposits,
- The degree of reliability of the information available in circular passports.
Measure the savings/revenues generated by used products
The financial residual value makes it possible to assess what income could potentially be generated through circular management of the building’s used resources. It takes into account the value of the material at the end of the period of use, and includes the additional costs of clean disposal as well as the savings compared to conventional waste management.
The calculations are made according to 3 scenarios:
- Deconstruction: Value corresponding to an immediate recovery of all the used components of the building, from the structure to the furniture,
- Renovation: Value corresponding to an immediate recovery of all the used components of a building, except those of the structure,
- Renovation over 30 years: Value corresponding to the recovery of all the used components of a building over 30 years, taking into account their renewal frequency during this period
In a simplified way, the residual value of a building is calculated by accumulating the recovery potential of its used components (via reuse or upcycling), by integrating the expenses avoided and the additional costs compared to conventional waste management, all weighted by the degree of demountability and the degree of wear of the components concerned:
For such calculations, the difficulty lies in associating a used component (e.g. a wooden beam) with the product valuation table that Upcyclea has been building up for years. The solution consists of using AI prediction algorithms that associate passports of used products with “generic passports” in which all the necessary composition, recovery (reuse/upcyclea), expenditure and additional costs information is found.
The use of this information by the Artificial Intelligence functions of myUpcyclea enables the fourth indicator of the Circular Signature to be calculated, i.e. the residual economic value of the building’s components, as a percentage of the initial construction/renovation material cost, in high and low hypothesis, for each of the 3 scenarios defined above.
