As climate change and environmental challenges continue to impact global well-being, architects are at the forefront of designing more sustainable, resilient structures. Achieving these outcomes requires collaboration across industries. Beyond partnerships, architects need materials that enable flexible, innovative designs. Steel plays a critical role by reducing embodied carbon, enhancing durability, and supporting circular construction approaches.
Steel is a durable, adaptable material essential to modern economies and the transition to a lower-carbon world. It plays a critical role in sustainable development, particularly in the built environment, transport, and energy infrastructure. If steel isn’t part of a product, it’s likely in the machine that made it. Its ability to be reused or recycled repeatedly (via additional processing) without losing quality makes it a material that could potentially have an important role in a circular economy.
Global steel manufacturer BlueScope faces the challenge of providing steel for society’s needs while reducing GHG emissions and improving circularity throughout the value chain. Across its businesses, efforts focus on supporting climate transition, enhancing resilience, and improving product longevity and circularity.
In September 2024, BlueScope, a Worldsteel 2024 Sustainability Champion, released its second Climate Action Report (CAR 2.0) alongside its annual Sustainability Report. These reports detail the steel manufacturer’s efforts—globally and in North America—over the past three years, including activating a circular economy, fostering responsible supply chains, and delivering on decarbonization.
With the building sector accounting for 39% of global carbon emissions (28% from building operations and 11% from embodied carbon in building materials and construction)1, there is an increasing focus on extending the useful life of existing structures and reusing entire structures and materials.
When applied effectively, steel can contribute to reducing material use and promoting disassembly, reuse, and remanufacturing.
Applying the circular economy concept to steel means recognizing its continued value beyond its original use.
Several factors support the shift to circularity, including:
• Design for, and retrieval of, higher value scrap: Steel is highly recyclable but requires that its design and application allow for the recovery of good quality scrap. This shift includes design to avoid contaminants (such as copper in automotive applications) and improved scrap sorting and processing technologies.
In FY2024, 50% of BlueScope’s global raw steel production originated from recovered and recycled scrap steel.
• Demand for data and traceability: There is a strong demand for credible and readily available information for tracking the circulation, characteristics, and credentials of materials to support informed decision-making. For steel in the built environment, this includes:
BlueScope Buildings North America has published EPDs for its brands, Butler Manufacturing and Varco Pruden, to communicate the environmental impact of its products over their lifecycle, including global warming potential (GHG emissions).
• Modular and prefabricated applications: BlueScope anticipates an increasing focus on prefabricated, modular applications to support fast construction, cost competitiveness, resource efficiency, and disassembly to facilitate potential reuse. Architects designing with modularity in mind can help accelerate the shift toward more adaptable buildings, while reducing waste and construction time.
• Supportive public policy and value chain collaboration: All stakeholders in product and material value chains have a role in enabling circular solutions at scale. Industries will need to work with governments and other stakeholders to ensure policy provides the right guidance and support to underpin the circular economy. This includes matters such as:
Collaborative partnerships are integral to delivering sustainable product solutions. BlueScope works closely with suppliers and research organizations to improve sustainability credentials and explore the role of steel in more sustainable structures, including hybrid structures in which steel is combined with other materials.
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1 Australian buildings and infrastructure: Opportunities for cutting embodied carbon, Industry Report. Clean Energy Finance Corporation. November 2021.
Responsible supply chains
Given the nature of value chain emissions, no single entity can accomplish these ambitions alone. Achieving long-term sustainability requires cooperation, active engagement, and commitment from suppliers and customers.
In 2023, BlueScope Buildings North America convened a Supplier Sustainability Summit to discuss how to accelerate supply chain sustainability in the built environment. Experienced suppliers shared insights, emphasizing the interconnectedness of supplier and customer emissions. Participants learned about BlueScope's investments and practices aimed at reducing GHG emissions and advancing renewable energy and a circular economy.
Acting on climate change is crucial for long-term success, driving efforts to reduce GHG emissions intensity and achieve net-zero goals.
BlueScope’s efforts focus on reducing embodied carbon in products through:
In Fiscal Year ’24, BlueScope achieved a 12.0% reduction in aggregated steelmaking GHG emission intensity against its FY2018 baseline, in line with its 2030 target level.
By 2050, steel use is projected to increase by 20% to meet the needs of a growing global population.2 Steel has the highest strength-to-weight ratio of all building materials, making it ideal for creating resilient, sustainable structures.
We believe that steel plays an important role in the transition to a lower-carbon world and for architects implementing sustainable building practices.
To download BlueScope’s full Sustainability Report, Sustainability Data Supplement, Climate Action Report, and others, visit www.bluescope.com/sustainability/reports.
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2 Source: World Steel Association https://worldsteel.org/about-steel
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