Circular electronics: construction’s blind spot in the race to net zero
As drones, digital twins, and IoT flood modern construction sites, the sector risks building on a throwaway foundation. Circular electronics may offer the only sustainable way forward.
IN Brief
Construction’s rapid digitalisation is creating a hidden electronics waste and carbon burden.
Circular design models such as repairable systems, Design for Disassembly, and Products as a Service reduce liability and conserve resources.
Policy shifts and material scarcity will force construction leaders to act before regulation makes it unavoidable.
Construction is accelerating into digitalisation at breakneck speed. Drones survey facades, IoT sensors feed building twins in real time, and AI-powered monitoring systems oversee safety and efficiency. The global drones-in-construction market is forecast to hit $12.5 billion by 2030, while the UK digital twin segment alone is growing at more than 30% annually from 2024 to 2030. Yet this efficiency revolution carries an overlooked downside: electronics are short-lived, resource-intensive, and structurally incompatible with construction’s long-term sustainability ambitions.
The life expectancy of digital tools contrasts starkly with the buildings they serve. Drones and site sensors are typically replaced every two to five years, yet they monitor structures designed to last half a century or more. The mismatch guarantees a recurring stream of electronic waste. Photovoltaic panels, an example of construction-related electronics, illustrate the scale of the problem — waste is projected to quadruple from 0.6 billion kg in 2022 to 2.4 billion kg by 2030.
Emma Armstrong, Sustainable Electronics Ambassador and Group Commercial Director at In2tec, warns that the industry has been too willing to overlook the impact of its new digital inventory. “Many devices and appliances are intentionally designed with a limited lifespan — a concept known as built-in obsolescence — encouraging consumers to replace rather than repair them. Repairing, reusing, and recycling otherwise obsolete technology conserves the materials needed by the construction sector,” she says.
While attention has traditionally focused on carbon locked in concrete and steel, electronics are adding an invisible burden. Studies show circular construction strategies, including reuse and deconstruction, can cut emissions by as much as 75% over a building’s lifecycle. At the same time, material scarcity is sharpening. Copper demand is expected to more than double by 2040 as grids expand and electrification accelerates, and sensors, cabling, and processors are all part of that squeeze. Relying on continual extraction brings environmental, geopolitical, and reputational risks. The practice of building products to fail — better known in policy circles as planned obsolescence — compounds that challenge by embedding waste into the sector’s future pipeline.
Armstrong argues that modular design and easy-to-repair technology can reduce these pressures by keeping products in circulation longer and limiting the need to source increasingly scarce and ecologically damaging materials. In2tec’s own ReUSE® project, applied to high-volume extraction fans, has already demonstrated the potential — saving 6.49 Mt of CO₂ in first-life manufacture while returning more than a million LEDs and hundreds of thousands of connectors back into circulation.
Regulation is moving to force the issue. The Environment Act 2021 has introduced Extended Producer Responsibility and electronic waste tracking, pushing disposal costs back onto producers. The Circular Economy Taskforce, announced in 2025, has also identified construction waste as a priority. Contractors sourcing non-circular electronics risk inheriting liability for disposal and non-compliance penalties. As Steve Reed, Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, put it: “It’s time to end Britain’s throwaway society – the status quo is economically, environmentally, and socially unsustainable.”
Circular models provide practical solutions. Design for Disassembly replaces glued assemblies with modular fasteners, allowing batteries and circuit boards to be removed and reused. Products as a Service shifts ownership of high-value items such as drones and sensor networks back to the manufacturer, ensuring manufacturers themselves bear the responsibility for maintenance and end-of-life recovery. Public procurement rules and ESG reporting requirements are already moving in this direction, creating early-mover advantage for contractors who embed lifecycle planning into procurement and project delivery.
Construction has poured investment into digital tools to boost efficiency, but every drone, sensor, and smart control system deployed without end-of-life planning becomes a liability. Unless the industry applies circular principles to electronics as rigorously as it does to structural materials, it risks constructing a net-zero façade on a throwaway foundation.