Digital IDs for Regenerative Materials
Think Earth Subproject 6 aims to create a comprehensive database for tracking the lifecycle of timber and earth-based materials, enabling new circular economy models. By implementing standardized digital IDs, it ensures traceability, resource availability assessment, and the reuse or repair of materials. The project focuses on analyzing Swiss supply chains, defining key identification parameters, and exploring state-of-the-art technologies for secure and practical implementation of digital IDs.
Regenerative building materials can be reused indefinitely and offer new business models in the circular economy, e.g. a secondary market for these building materials or components. In addition, regenerative building materials have enormous potential to improve various sustainability criteria compared to conventional construction methods. In order to implement these new business models and to quantitatively assess the benefits of regenerative building materials, a comprehensive database is needed and is currently lacking in practice, which covers the entire life cycle from extraction to return to nature.
The aim of this subproject is therefore to develop the basis for such a comprehensive database for timber and earth over the entire life cycle. The chosen approach investigates standardized traceability by means of unique digital IDs. Such transparent proofs of origin should make it possible to determine the availability of resources on site, estimate the service life of the materials used, and renew, repair or reuse them in new contexts.
The focus of Subproject 6, on the one hand, is the information required to ensure that such identification is useful for all players in the Swiss value chain. To this end, the supply chains in Switzerland for both timber and earth will be analyzed and important parameters will be identified. The technical possibilities for implementing such IDs according to the state-of-the-art will be examined. This includes the digital ID itself, the linking of the renewable physical materials with this digital ID, and the trustworthy retrievability of such an ID over the entire life cycle.
Contact person
Dr. Jens Juri Hunhevicz
ETH Zurich – D-BAUG Circular Engineering for Architecture
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