The consultant said that capturing organic waste streams from cities and the countryside could provide the industry with lower-cost, lower-CO2 building materials such as bricks, insulation and partition boards.

The report envisages a completely circular system with building waste fed back into the biological cycle at the end of its service life with nutrients returned to the soil.

The potential for the bio-economy is huge. Over 40 million tonnes of dried organic waste from agriculture and forestry was produced in Europe in 2014 alone and the amount is growing year on year. A kilogram of waste incinerated for energy recovery has a value of approximately 0.85 Euros but the same material used for interior cladding could sell for up to six Euros per kilogram.

The report also points to advances in the development of alternative organic materials, including mushroom bricks grown in five days and waste potatoes used as insulation and acoustic absorbers. Arup has created the Solar Leaf, the first façade system in the world cultivating micro-algae to generate heat and biomass and BioBuild, the first self-supporting façade panel made out of bio-composite materials.

The report highlights the following organic matter products already available:

Guglielmo Carra, Arup’s materials consulting lead, Europe, said: “As one of the world’s largest users of resources we need to move away from our ‘take, use, dispose’ mentality.

“There are already pockets of activity, with some producers making lower-CO2 building products from organic materials.

“What we need now is for the industry to come together to scale up this activity so that it enters the mainstream.

“An important first step is to work with government to rethink construction codes and regulations to consider waste as a resource, opening up the opportunity to repurpose it on an industrial-scale.”

For a full copy of the report The Urban Bio-Loop: Growing, Making and Regenerating click here.