Steel Without End: Practical Insights to Promote Reused Steel in Design

The opening session, Steel Without End, set the tone, highlighting the enormous potential of reuse, but also the stubborn complexity behind it. We’re now reusing and recycling more steel than ever, but it’s not as simple as swapping one for the other. Reuse and recycling are mutually exclusive, and despite ambitions, 100% recycling is likely unachievable. We need to be realistic, and smarter, in how we approach this.

The UK currently exports about as much steel as it imports. That should raise eyebrows. We’re taking buildings down as quickly as we’re putting them up yet failing to capture the circular value in between. Why aren’t we closing the loop domestically? Electric arc furnaces may be coming online, but the transition away from carbon-intensive blast furnaces is still years away. In the rush to source low-carbon steel now, we risk offshoring our responsibilities and undermining UK industry.

The most promising insights came from the practical case studies. Tools like Stockmatcher and Efestos Hub show there is a real, growing market for reused steel. Organisations such as Responsible Steel provide certification standards to ensure that steel used in construction projects is sourced from environmentally responsible producers.

In London, there is a strong planning push to increase the use of reused steel in construction—Westminster City Council is a notable leader in this area. The city also benefits from a readily available market of donor buildings, which makes sourcing reclaimed steel more feasible.

However, when looking at the national picture, the reuse of steel is less widespread, and further efforts are needed to scale up infrastructure, supply chains, and policy support to make steel reuse a mainstream practice across the UK.

Key enablers for the successful deployment of reused steel in construction projects include:

• Early engagement with the client and design team to identify opportunities for incorporating reused steel into the design.
• Proactive market engagement to understand the availability and specifications of reclaimed steel components.
• Designing with flexibility, including allowing greater tolerances in structural members to accommodate variations in reclaimed materials.
• Setting embodied carbon targets into contracts to drive supply chain incentives to consider low carbon material use.

The most fundamental step is to ensure that the design is material-efficient from the outset, minimising the overall consumption of resources before considering reuse strategies.

Our approach in Pick Everard is to ensure that conversations around circular building design begin early in the project lifecycle. This allows us to help set meaningful and measurable sustainability targets, and to identify practical, cost-effective design strategies that align with project programmes and budgets. By embedding these principles from the outset, we support the delivery of buildings that are not only environmentally responsible but also commercially viable.