2026 Theses Master's

Building Circularity: Pathways and Barriers to Carbon Emission and Waste Reduction In NYC’s Built Environment

Swartz, Erma

New York City faces a significant challenge in reducing embodied carbon from its construction and demolition (C&D) sector. Unlike operational emissions, embodied carbon is embedded across material sourcing, manufacturing, construction, and end-of-life processes, making it more difficult to regulate and reduce. Addressing it requires not just incremental improvements, but coordinated changes across design, procurement, waste management, and the data systems used to track materials over time. While the city has made meaningful commitments to climate action, existing policies lack a system-wide, scalable, and economically viable strategy for reducing embodied carbon.

This research examines how circular construction can serve as that strategy. It evaluates the implementation, expansion, and market implications of circular policies as a pathway for reducing embodied carbon at scale. Using a mixed-methods approach, the study maps the current policy and market landscape in New York City to identify where barriers, gaps, and opportunities exist. Through policy analysis, semi-structured interviews, LCA-informed OLS analysis, and policy informed scenario-based econometric modeling, the research demonstrates that the primary constraint to scaling circularity is not technical feasibility, but coordination, cost structures, and market signals. It identifies where circular strategies offer the greatest environmental and economic impact and outlines a planning framework for accelerating low-carbon, material-efficient, and equitable construction practices in New York City.