Typically, building one house produces a weight-busting 11 tonnes of waste. That’s almost the equivalent of 11 hatchback cars.

DEFRA reported that in 2014 the UK generated 202.8 million tons of waste. Construction, demolition and excavation (CDE) was responsible for 59% of that number. No other industry sends as much waste to landfill. The glaring, immediate problem is we are running out of places to put it.

Building a resource efficient construction industry is one of our biggest challenges. Other industries – such as manufacturing, healthcare and technology – have evolved over the years. They’ve embraced technological advances, and refined their processes and the materials they work with in ways that would be unrecognisable to a worker in the same industry 50 years ago.

The construction industry has not changed nearly so much in comparison. There are therefore huge opportunities for resource efficiency in construction.

How do we as designers become part of the solution rather than simply reinforcing the status quo?

The Ellen MacArthur Foundation defines the circular economy as one that is restorative and regenerative by design, and which aims to keep products, components and materials at their highest utility and value at all times.

As designers we recognise the immense contribution we can make in the quest for circular economies in the built environment. It could be argued that traditional buildings are wasteful because the entire ethos around creation and product only relates to the immediate and specific end user.

It is vital that we augment our thinking beyond our building’s users. We must look much wider, to consider everyone who extracts, builds, uses, and disposes of things in the buildings life cycle.

By adopting innovative approaches we must change the way we design buildings.

We need to design buildings that use fewer materials, re-use existing demolition/strip-out materials and, where appropriate, work with materials with higher levels of recycled content. Buildings in the future must incorporate the latest technology to help users make better choices. We must not look at buildings as ‘finished’ products, rather adaptable, reprogrammable machines that can constantly evolve, ideally based on real time data.

Design is never done.