Circular construction

The construction industry has been at the heart of our projects since 2018, both in terms of input materials (materials and equipment from deconstruction) and outlets (sediment reuse in civil engineering, production of aggregates or even cement).

Close ties with businesses and their local areas

We have built numerous ties with civil engineering, construction, deconstruction, groundworks, transport/logistics, dredging, recycling and reuse companies, as well as with quarries and concrete producers, in Hauts-de-France, Normandy, Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur and, to a lesser extent, Île-de-France.

We have conducted 82 interviews with business leaders in these sectors, and 34 with ecosystem stakeholders (professional bodies, technical centres, clusters).

19 families of input materials and 18 of end products addressed to date

We have worked with numerous materials and co-products: river and marine sediments, structural materials (concrete, brick), finishing materials (plaster, wood, metals, PVC, glass), railway ballast, sleepers and site residues, roof gravel, household equipment (ceramics, electrical equipment, joinery, plumbing and heating, metalwork, floor coverings, letterboxes, stair treads), not to mention their variants (sanitary ware/washbasins, circuit breakers/LED panels/emergency lighting, guardrails/handrails).

And just as many end products: sediment-sand and recycled aggregates of all sizes, ready-mixed and marine concrete, cement, road sub-base layers, reused ballast, recycled plaster, recycled finishing materials (see above), refurbished equipment (see above), sediment for agricultural use.

We follow value chains over time

We support the emergence, then the structuring of value chains over the long term:

ALLUVIO (2018) gave rise to the Wambrechies platform of the State waterways agency (VNF), which also supplies cement production stemming from SEDICIM (2022)
SEDINNOVE (2022) opened Seine estuary sediment-sand (Honfleur, Port-Jérôme) to civil engineering, an approach extended upstream with SEDISEINE (Rouen, 2025), during which we connected, for the first time locally, the logistics sector (the Paris-Le Havre-Rouen commercial port) with farming
The CIRCULAR URBAN RENOVATIONS – STAGE 1 preliminary studies (2020) were decisive in shaping, then consolidating Greater Lille social housing providers’ circular approach; we carried out a first review and established economic and financial projections in STAGE 2 (2026) for the same providers

Cross-industry cooperation

Through its work, Inecko has connected construction with several other industries, sometimes unexpected ones. For example, we have brought together:

The rail sector and the aggregates market (ECOCIR)
Inland waterways and the cement industry (ALLUVIO, SEDICIM)
A logistics operator (a commercial port) and road building (SEDINNOVE), then farming (SEDISEINE)
And supported the spread of reuse towards renewables (solar panels), the glass industry or metal products (CIRCULAR URBAN RENOVATIONS – STAGE 2)

Diffusion also happens step by step: recycling structural materials draws in civil engineering, which turns to port and canal sediments, whose managers in turn explore farming to reuse these same sediments.

Circular construction applied to social housing

Our work rolls out circularity (recycling and reuse) across social housing deconstruction, rehabilitation and new construction. We support social housing providers in assessing these transformations through reviews and projections, whatever the local stage of emergence or maturity.

As early as 2019, we assessed for La Méta*, then an alliance of Vilogia and Lille Métropole Habitat, the economic implications of a substantial recycling and reuse effort in Greater Lille urban renewal** deconstructions, targeting 90% reuse of materials and equipment (CIRCULAR URBAN RENOVATIONS – STAGE 1) and the creation of a dedicated platform. Our figures confirmed expectations on the local economy and on job and business creation. This contributed, among other factors of course, to circular construction taking shape across Greater Lille, a then resolutely pioneering approach in France and even beyond.

From 2020, recycling became mainstream (100% recovery of inert materials, 98% of finishing materials), and the PresRV platform has since been launched after pivoting towards reuse, now fully structuring and even on the threshold of local industrialisation. La Méta’s circular approach was recognised at the 2025 Social Housing Innovation Awards.

The first economic studies at this level of detail

At this stage of deployment, La Méta wished to establish a financial and economic review of these operations before considering extending reuse to equipment. The CIRCULAR URBAN RENOVATIONS – STAGE 2 studies cover 116 dwellings demolished per year between 2020 and 2024 (6 outgoing materials), then 5,300 deconstructed, rehabilitated or built per year in 2027-29, for 18 materials in both outflows and inflows.

These are the very first studies in France of this scale and level of detail: 27 materials across 34 inflows or outflows, 48 value chains assessed, 32 companies interviewed, 35 hours of interviews, cross-checked data, in-depth email exchanges with 12 of these companies, sensitivity analysis (by scenario). We explore value chains at various levels of economic maturity, notably ‘frontier’ reuse value chains (e.g. plumbing, letterbox units).

For both stages – past (roll-out of structural and finishing materials recycling) and upcoming (roll-out of equipment reuse) – we analyse the financial aspects for social housing providers and measure economic outcomes for local areas. We also assess long-term outcomes, no less decisive: cooperation, skills, innovation capacities, alignment with the green-digital transition.

We provide operational recommendations and also explore ways to trigger the nascent industrialisation, in which social housing providers play a substantial role. Finally, we encourage innovation transfers from adjacent industries through very concrete measures and schemes.

Our conclusions

The financial outcome is positive for social housing providers, including with a ‘frontier’ reuse approach***: 17% savings for materials recycling in 2020-24, 3% expected in 2027-29 for reuse value chains, which are far more emergent
Main explanatory factors:
- Materials recycling review (2020-24): landfill avoidance
- Reuse scale-up (2027-29): contained extra costs of careful dismantling; lower transport costs for items to be reused (more items per truck thanks to orderly, rationalised loading vs. loose in skips); reused items slightly cheaper than new ones
- These sources of savings keep growing as value chains become structured
Local outcomes are modest for recycling: reduced activity due to landfill avoidance; sorting for recycling purposes does not substantially increase labour****
They become significant with the leap to reuse: careful dismantling and refurbishing are highly labour-intensive (~50% of jobs are work-integration jobs), i.e. 116 jobs, EUR 23.4M revenue and EUR 12.2M value added per year, for 300 deconstructions, 2,500 rehabilitations and 2,500 constructions per year, net of activity reductions (overwhelmingly new materials production and sales)
Circular construction generates a wealth of cross- and intra-industry cooperation, and innovation (products, processes, marketing, organisation), while being very open to adopting innovation from other value chains
Scaling up through industrialisation is wanted by all operators: economies of scale, process optimisation and lower production costs will stem from sufficient demand, which only large project owners and social housing providers can drive
The rewards:
- For social housing providers: growing financial gains (steadily falling prices of reused items, rising buy-back prices after deconstruction, including for newly marketable materials)
- For local areas: decarbonisation, resource conservation, business creation and lasting local economic development through innovation and cooperation, ‘first mover advantage’ for pioneering areas in value chains set to become mainstream

These results have already convinced La Méta to extend reuse to 16 operations (1,967 dwellings). An extension to 5,300 dwellings a year between 2027 and 2029 is under more than serious consideration.

* Vilogia, Lille Métropole Habitat, Partenord Habitat, Terre d’Opale Habitat.

** ‘New National Urban Renewal Programme’.

*** Compared to conventional practices, where recycling is of course not absent, established from the national environmental agency’s (ADEME) reviews.

**** Recycling activity is not directly caused by the receipt of new materials, but by a possible subsequent purchase, unrelated to the sorting of materials leaving deconstruction sites.

To know more, explore the role of circular construction in the green-digital transition.