Facility and building management represents approximately two percent of Canadian municipal spend base, is a sizeable federal operating expenditure, and contributes more than forty-five megatonnes of CO2 to the atmosphere.

Within facility and building management, carpets and lighting, for example, are universal features and building management assets that typically end up as waste in landfills. They are material-intensive; mostly manufactured using virgin and non-renewable resources; often changed out while still functional; and difficult to recycle. However, by embedding circular economy thinking into the procurement process, closed-loop systems can be created to ensure the resources used are recovered, reused, and recycled back into the same or new production processes that extend the inherent value and prolongs the lifespan of resources.

During renovations, entire carpets are often replaced even though they are still functional. Moreover, it is often just sections of carpet that have reached end-of-life in high-traffic areas, which means the perfectly useable carpet is unnecessarily lost to disposal. It is estimated that between 95 – 99 percent of carpets are lost to disposal in Canada. While efforts are being made by producers to recover and recycle this carpet, most of it is being exported overseas, which is costly and inefficient. Additionally, various impacts occur throughout the carpets’ lifecycle, including chemical emissions, during manufacturing and disposal at end-of-life.

Applying circular procurement principles to facility and building management can advance multiple circular business models – product as service, resource recovery, and circular supplies – to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, extend resource value, create new resource inputs, and eliminate waste.

Buyers and suppliers of carpets are recognizing the environmental and economic losses of landfilling carpets and deploying several of the circular business models to reduce the losses and impacts.