German Pilot Project Pushes 100% Recycled Concrete as Regulation Overhaul Promises €43 Million in Savings

A residential building in Epe, a small town in the district of Steinfurt, North Rhine-Westphalia, has become a showcase for what the construction industry calls a circular-economy breakthrough. Built entirely from concrete made with 100% recycled demolition waste, the house contains no natural stone aggregates whatsoever. The compressive strength is comparable to that of conventional concrete, according to the project developer EcoBau GmbH. The news emerged in mid-July, just days before the federal environment ministry unveiled a regulatory rewrite designed to make such practices more economical on a broader scale.

The reform targets Germany’s Ersatzbaustoffverordnung (Substitute Building Materials Ordinance). A draft put forward by the Federal Environment Ministry on Friday aims to slash bureaucracy while keeping environmental standards intact. The ministry estimates that the changes will save companies around €43 million annually. The savings stem primarily from lighter requirements for quality monitoring, sample analysis, and documentation. Industry experts have long criticised the existing rules as overly complex and costly.

A single measure accounts for the bulk of the relief. Under the new rules, operators of mobile processing plants will need a suitability certificate only when a plant is first commissioned, when it undergoes a major modification, or when it shifts to a higher material class. That alone is expected to cut costs by roughly €33.6 million per year. For demolition and recycling firms, the flexibility means they can process materials directly on site without constantly renewing permits, reducing logistics expenses and making recycled building materials more attractive at the point of origin.

The regulatory easing is not happening in isolation. On 15 July, the North Rhine-Westphalia state parliament passed an amendment to the state building code, set to take effect on 1 September. The law relaxes technical requirements for work on existing structures and introduces a separate Umbauordnung (conversion code) to simplify conversions into residential space and building extensions. Together, the state and federal moves are intended to boost the circular economy in construction.

Yet industry representatives argue that further steps are necessary. The Federal Environment Minister, Carsten Schneider, has called for a constitutional amendment to enshrine climate adaptation as a joint task of the federal and state governments, which he says would streamline the use of funds. Achieving that would require a two-thirds majority in both the Bundestag and the Bundesrat. Meanwhile, a director of the VdW Rheinland Westfalen, an association representing the housing industry, welcomed the deregulation but stressed the need for a federal law on the so-called Gebäudetyp E (building type E). Only such a law, he said, would guarantee legally sound and cost-efficient construction. He also urged coherent coordination among different environmental initiatives, pointing to the planned plastics tax — the details of which remain unresolved in the 2027 federal budget — as one example of overlapping regulatory efforts that need better alignment.

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