Considerable amounts of natural resources are embodied in the building stock and infrastructure. Designing resource-efficient buildings is, therefore, an important approach to reduce raw material use and environmental impacts. However, sustainability criteria in national building codes focus primarily on improving energy efficiency and waste recovery. The EU target to recover 70% of construction and demolition waste is already being achieved in many countries; however, this is achieved using the lowest levels of the waste management hierarchy. Although landfill is avoided, the retained value of recovered products is generally low and there is a need to prioritise higher levels of recovery, i.e. reuse and waste prevention. Targets for this higher level of utilisation are currently unavailable, although they can be expected to be included in future European waste legislation. Consequently, the reuse of building structures is still uncommon and is not largely supported through regulation. The building stock is not designed for deconstruction, and material recovery for reuse at the end of life of buildings is complex and challenging. To support greater reuse of steel structures, this paper demonstrates the calculation of the economic potential and environmental impact of reused steel building elements.

建筑材料和基础设施中蕴藏着大量自然资源。因此，设计资源节约型建筑物是减少原材料使用和环境影响的重要方法。但是，国家建筑法规中的可持续性标准主要集中在提高能源效率和废物回收方面。欧盟许多国家已经实现了回收70％的建筑和拆除废物的目标；但是，这是使用最低级别的废物管理层次来实现的。尽管避免了垃圾掩埋，但是回收产品的保留价值通常较低，并且需要优先考虑更高水平的回收，即再利用和废物预防。目前尚没有达到更高利用率水平的目标，尽管可以预期它们将被纳入未来的欧洲废物立法中。因此，建筑结构的再利用仍然不常见，并且没有得到法规的大力支持。该建筑存货不是为破坏而设计的，并且在建筑物寿命终止时回收材料以进行再利用是复杂且具有挑战性的。为了支持钢结构的更大程度的重用，本文演示了重用钢建筑构件的经济潜力和环境影响的计算。