A new research project, PREUSE, has begun. It aims to help local and regional public authorities improve the management of their material resources and implement solutions to reclaim and reuse building materials.

The five-year project is funded by Interreg NWE and is based on existing solutions developed during the FCRBE project, of which Salvo was the leading UK partner. The team comprises eight organisations, led by Rotor and including Bellastock and Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology. A New Interreg NWE project means another new acronym to learn: PREUSE, which stands for 'Public Responses to Enable the Use of Salvaged Building Elements'.

To kick off PREUSE, the multinational team travelled to two different sites in Brussels: the Municipal depot of roadworks materials of Schaarbeek and In Limbo, a reuse centre for materials salvaged from cultural organisations. The inspiring field trip allowed the partners to discover and meet the key players involved in reuse.

Images above Bonneuil-sur-Marne centre for the reuse of road materials & street furniture © IG preuse_nwe

Through three pilot projects, the team will test the viability of innovative formats for future resource centres. The locations are Lorient, La Fabrique des Quartiers, and Utrecht across France and the Netherlands. Both La Fabrique des Quartiers and Utrecht participated in the FCRBE project, which worked to increase the reuse of construction materials.

The partnership will create a strategy to develop resource centres specifically designed to reuse construction materials. In addition, local action plans will be drawn up for any development in resource centres. Finally, by the end of the project, the team hopes to provide full training to organisations in the reclamation and reuse of construction materials. 

The culmination of these outputs will hopefully achieve the overall goal of the PREUSE project: to make reclamation easier, more accessible, and better organised.

PREUSE has already received copious support and funding from various organisations. At this point, the project's funding stands at € 6,773,346, with the EU contributing € 4,064,008. With this immense amount of funding and support, we can only hope this groundbreaking project will succeed.