Kingspan : partners with Valobat for a circular built environment in France

• Engagement with French extended producer scheme collective reinforces commitment to circularity
• Partnership will drive end of life solutions and availability of waste streams for construction products

As part of our commitment to finding the best solutions for re-use and recycling in our industry, we are investing in Valobat, a French extended producer collective for the construction sector.

An Extended Producer Responsibility scheme for the construction sector will be applicable in France from January 2023. This means all construction material manufacturers will pay eco-contributions, which will be used to build up a large collection and sorting system to take back all construction waste throughout the country. The system will be set up and managed by a small number of collectives, where the shareholders are construction companies themselves.

Kingspan Group is joining Valobat, and close to 50 other larger companies and trade associations, as a shareholder. As well as investing, the group will collaborate to build up innovative and ambitious circularity objectives and plans.

With a few other collectives, Valobat will create a pioneering full waste management system, which will aim to ensure materials remain in use past a building's end of life and minimise the environmental impacts of construction waste. This is designed to promote circularity initiatives like recycling and take-back schemes and build a cradle-to-cradle mentality into the industry.

Construction and demolition waste provides the highest amount of global waste by volume, estimated at one third of the total¹, but today less than a third of construction and demolition waste is currently recovered². The circular economy offers a solution to the current take-make-waste approach. To help address this, Planet Passionate, our ten-year sustainability strategy, includes the targets of zero waste to landfill by 2030, and 100% of our QuadCore™ products to utilise recycled PET by 2025. In 2020, we reduced our waste to landfill by 13% through targeted waste reduction and reprocessing programmes.

As part of our vision to help accelerate the transition towards a circular built environment, and as part of our overall strategy, we are conducting extensive R&D and innovation efforts to improve in the area of circularity. For example, in our QuadCore™ insulated panel range in the UK, we have developed a warranty that, as well as assuring performance, includes a take-back scheme to enable reuse, recycling or remanufacture of QuadCore™ panels at the end of the 25-year warranty period. The ambition is that QuadCore™ products in the UK will avoid landfill where technically possible, and offering this scheme provides the first step on the journey to reducing our need for raw materials.

Cedric Bruge, Managing Director of Kingspan Insulated Panels in France, said: