A £9 million project lead by Glass Technology Services and British Glass aims to completely recycle all types of waste from the construction industry.
The project is being undertaken by scientists based in South Yorkshire, along with 27 of its European partners.
This includes construction company Acciona and other industry and research partners in Spain (Tecnalia), Turkey (TCMA) and Sweden (RISE CBI).
Their aim is to recycle glass, wood, ceramics, plastic and rubber.
They have shown that glass construction waste can be transformed into valuable reusable raw materials.
One application blends finely ground waste glass - which cannot be reused in a glass furnace - with other industrial waste to produce an ‘eco cement’.
Eco cement has been used to build roads and made into pre-cast concrete blocks and other shapes for building homes and roads.
Using waste materials such as the finely ground glass has multiple benefits, improving the performance of the cement, reducing the energy requirements of cement manufacturing, and preventing waste materials from ending up in landfill.
Chris Holcroft, Senior Technologist and Technology Development Lead for Glass Technology Services, said: “This is an exciting project with a huge amount of potential for sustainable building.
“The more glass we can save from landfill the better it is for the environment.”
Glass Technology Services specialised in early work looking at the available materials, while the partner teams then successfully demonstrated the new cement production in a laboratory, in a pilot study, and on an industrial scale.
The finished products are now being tested at a number of case study sites.
This activity is part of the FISSAC project funded by the EU’s H2020 programme.
FISSAC stands for ‘Fostering Industrial Symbiosis For a Sustainable Resource Intensive Industry Across the Extended Construction Value Chain’.
Pictured: Chris Holcroft of Glass Technology Services
