Feasible use of construction and demolition waste in concrete production: SeRaMCo project

About 850 million tons of construction and demolition waste (C&DW) are produced yearly in European Union. The Waste Framework Directive 2008/98/EC aims to a minimum target of reuse, recycling, and material recovery of non-hazardous C&DW at 70% by weight until 2020. Recycling of C&DW is quite important and has to be promoted. Up to now, most of recycled C&DW has been used as a base and sub-base materials in road construction, while only a small quantity of C&DW is reused in concrete.

Interreg North-Western Europe project SeRaMCo (Secondary Raw Materials for Concrete Precast Products) aims to replace primary raw materials with the high-quality materials recycled from C&DW, e.g. concrete, bricks, tiles and ceramics (CBTC), in production of the cement and concrete products for use in North-Western Europe. To attain this goal, the project will:
a) analyse and improve sorting of C&DW;
b) develop and test new concrete mixes and technologies for the production of concrete precast products (CPPs) made from the recycled CBTC;
c) establish a market niche for CPPs, leading to the economic advantages for the producers and generating new jobs in the construction sector.