When people talk about sustainable construction, it’s usually big-name, flagship-built environment projects that dominate the conversation. Schemes that come with large sustainability budgets, dedicated storage space, and a client team with dedicated ESG metrics.

But what about the thousands of smaller fit-out and refurbishment projects happening every day across the city? Remember: The average lifespan of an office fit-out is just 7 years!

These ‘bread and butter’ projects – like office reconfigurations, retail refits, minor healthcare upgrades, or school refurbishments – rarely make headlines. They typically don’t have the budget, space, or client buy-in for bold sustainability ideas. Yet collectively, they represent a massive volume of material use, waste generation, and embodied carbon.

This is where Material Index comes in. As a pioneering platform supported by an expert team connecting surplus building materials with new projects, Material Index helps unlock the potential for reuse and circularity – especially for smaller fit-out sites that often struggle with sourcing, logistics, and storage. By facilitating smarter material reuse, they’re transforming how projects of all sizes can contribute to a more sustainable built environment.

In this blog, we’ll explore how our partnership with Material Index has been instrumental in advancing Virtus’s ambitious Circular Economy strategy. As an SME, we work on a variety of mid and small-sized commercial fit-out and refurbishment projects across London. The collaboration with Material Index has been opening doors and helping to tackle network and logistical issues that smaller sites face.

At the scale of projects we have at Virtus, challenges do not stop at space constraints and short programmes. Barriers are also reflected in the human resources that are afforded to our wider sustainability goals.

In 2024, we took a major step forward by appointing our first internal sustainability lead, Poppy Cunningham, Head of ESG. Poppy’s role has been pivotal in embedding sustainability into our business processes and championing change across projects. But re-use initiatives require more than a single dedicated voice – they need collaboration, networks, and the right tools to make them happen. With Material Index on board, things are shifting.

After winning some funding from ReLondon’s SME Circular Business community, Material Index were brought on board to complete one of Virtus’ early pre-refurbishment audits. Material index brought their expertise in identifying viable reuse opportunities even on the smallest of sites.

The Material Index Marketplace helps catalogue strip-out items that would otherwise be destined for the skip and connects them with relevant reuse demand.

At Virtus, our Designworks team is actively using this tool to identify and integrate listed items into our designs, ensuring that reuse opportunities are considered at the earliest stages of client proposals. This allows us to create schemes that are not only environmentally responsible but also enriched with unique character and material stories, giving clients spaces that feel bespoke, authentic, and connected to a broader circular economy.

Realistically, our projects do not require all of the bells and whistles that Material Index can offer its bigger clients. It is not uncommon for our schemes to span less than a year’s quarter, sometimes with boundaries less than one floorplate. In these instances, it has been incredibly helpful and refreshing to work with an organisation who don’t let systems and process get in the way of real reuse opportunity, which can be a problem for smaller companies and projects. Material Index have been able to offer bespoke solutions that allow Virtus to use their auditing program to create our own small quickfire audits. Access to their brokering team has been instrumental in getting items shifted within short timeframes, in this way Material Index have felt like an extension of our small ESG team.

Our partnership has already diverted 23 tonnes of material from disposal, avoided unnecessary new purchases, and created cost savings for both contractor and client. On our very first project after purchasing a licence for the Material Index platform, the sales from reclaimed materials sale of 600m of carpet tiles saw us break even from our partnership, this gained interest and trust from top management. More importantly, it’s created a proof point, that with the right tools and mindset, material reuse at small scale can be viable and can be economically beneficial.

When it comes to sustainable construction, small projects add up to a bigger sustainability opportunity and might just be the biggest untapped opportunity we’ve got. We can’t ignore the workhorses of the built environment, even if they rarely make glossy case study headlines.

We asked Material Index – What is it like working with an SME vs some of the large contractors and developers?

Re-use Story:

These pictures were taken at different stages of our recent project on Pall Mall, snapshots of a pre-refurbishment audit, storage of carpet tiles and raised access floor panels ready for collection, and finally some extra effort from the project (and ESG) team to get materials into their transport…..success does not always have to look perfect, and it can be hard work to get there.
Even if this does mean wheeling thousands of carpet tiles up a ramp!