Recycling concrete from buildings that are no longer needed requires long-term thinking at the building's inception
Thursday, September 26, 2013 - 07:00
in Physics & Chemistry
Urban mining is increasingly being taken seriously by industry because it gives access to materials—such as expensive metals used in electronics—that are buried in waste tips and landfills. However, there is a new kid on the block—literally. Concrete buildings, when demolished, can serve as an excellent source of new building materials. "Instead of transporting aggregates from far away, we can use local buildings as a source for aggregates," says Francesco Di Maio, a researcher in waste separation and recycling technology at the Technical University of Delft in the Netherlands. He is also the coordinator of the EU-funded project called C2CA.