NFFT’s Professional Coordination Working Committee continues its work in 2021 as well. This year’s first online workshop session focused on the possible ways for the reduction of the carbon footprint of the construction industry. The keynote speeches were delivered by Éva Beleznay, sustainability expert, dr. Zoltán Magyar, associate professor at the Budapest University of Technology and Economics (BMGE) and Krisztián Petrovszky, managing director of Clean-Way Ltd. As the third Monitoring Report showed, economic growth is clearly driven by the construction industry but this leads to higher environmental burden and more material use. The action plan proposal of 2018 identifies the construction industry as one of the key areas of the sustainability transition.

As a result, one of the greatest challenges of the future is to find ways to improve material efficiency in the building sector.

Participants at the workshop session agreed that this requires the increase of natural resources and the ecosystem as well as the adoption of laws and regulations for sustainable architecture. To create a high energy efficient and decarbonised building stock, a long-term building modernisation strategy is needed.  Urgent solutions are also necessary to address the problem of construction and demolition waste as currently 40 to 50% of illegal landfills is demolition waste despite its recyclable nature. Consequently, the circularity of constructions should be enhanced by connecting building projects and waste recycling businesses and by raising the mandatory rate of re-used materials in new building projects.