Material passports move from pilot to practice
20 November 2025, Alyssa Jade McDonald-Baertl
Across our projects this year, circular construction, municipal building inventories, bio-based material ventures, and refurbishment programmes across Europe, we see how material passports are shifting from experimental pilots to practical foundation. This isn’t theory anymore, it’s what we’re seeing directly in assignments such as
Refurbishment teams logging structural components during early-stage surveys rather than at demolition.
Municipal authorities requesting digital building inventories as part of circularity commitments.
Bioeconomy ventures tagging material inputs so downstream recyclers can verify composition.
Developers asking for material audits because financiers are beginning to recognise retained material value.
We notice how the sector is moving away from demolition logic and towards material stewardship, and material passports are clearly the enabler.
Research tends to back up what we are seeing, such as the systematic review by Mankata et al. (2025) which tracks the rapid rise in material-passport adoption across Europe, documenting use-cases, data needs, and stakeholder roles (MDPI, Buildings 15, 1825). Another 2025 analysis by Costa et al. in npj Materials Sustainability offers eight concrete recommendations for mainstreaming passports (including data standardisation, early-stage logging, and alignment with financial instruments).
Both sources confirm what our projects have been signalling for months, the single largest blocker in circular construction is the absence of reliable information about what buildings actually contain.
What I see is that without information, everything defaults to waste and then with information, value becomes legible (and markets respond accordingly).
Concretely, pardon the pun, we’re now seeing consistent shifts
- Clients/projects who log materials early can negotiate better, recover value, and plan circular pathways rather than demolish by default.
- Passport data allows lenders and insurers to model risk and retained asset value, something impossible under the old “black box” model.
- When agricultural-waste materials (coffee, avocado, mango residues, etc.) are tagged and traceable, they move into higher-value markets.
- Cities can quantify materials already in circulation, identifying recovery opportunities and reducing new procurement spend.
The question facing our partners now is not whether material passports will become standard and how quickly they want to build the data and governance capability that will define the next decade of circularity. For our clients, looking to move early, the opportunity is clearly showing how a small investment in material intelligence now creates disproportionate advantage later, when policy and finance catch up.