Sustainable use of building materials - IOER Materials Register Germany provides essential foundations

10.04.2025

Source: Leibniz Institute of Ecological Urban and Regional Development

The building sector is criticized worldwide: it accounts for around 45% of global resource consumption and a significant proportion of greenhouse gas emissions. At the same time, demolitions generate millions of tons of construction waste every year.

Sustainable change is urgently needed - and the Leibniz Institute of Ecological Urban and Regional Development (IOER) is now providing a central data basis to support precisely this change with the new Material Cadastre Germany.

For the first time, the IOER is providing comprehensive information on the composition and distribution of building materials in the entire German building stock. Over 20 billion tons of building materials are used in the country's approximately 51.6 million buildings - with concrete (46%), sand-lime brick and brick as the dominant materials. The proportion of renewable raw materials such as wood or straw is currently only around one percent. The CO₂ emissions associated with building materials amount to 2.86 billion tons - equivalent to Germany's emissions in four years.

The cadastre is based on 3D building models from the Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy and links these with material-specific key figures that the IOER has developed over more than a decade. This makes it possible to derive which materials were used and in what quantities for each municipality and each building type (e.g. detached house, office building or factory building). This data forms an important basis for decision-making:

• Municipalities to plan recycling strategies and deconstruction potentials
• Architecture firms and start-ups to develop business models in the field of circular construction
• Recycling companies to better calculate future waste volumes
• Planning authorities to manage the use of secondary raw materials in a targeted manner

"Our aim is to close material cycles regionally and thus match the raw material requirements for new construction with the demolition material on site," says Georg Schiller, head of the "Anthropogenic and Natural Resources" research group at the IOER. The material register thus provides a central basis for circular construction, sustainable urban development and municipal management instruments.

The cadastre is publicly accessible via the data repository ioerDATA. In addition, the Information System Built Environment (ISBE) provides an interactive insight into the material key figures.

Research will continue: in future, even more precise data, for example on building age or potential pollution, will be integrated in order to further expand the potential applications of the cadastre. The IOER relies on close cooperation with local authorities, planning offices and the construction industry.

You can find the entire press release on the website of the Leibniz Institute of Ecological Urban and Regional Development.