Cemex Poland has recently added recycled aggregates to their product range, which aligns with their mission at the Reincarnate project. The new product portfolio is under the umbrella brand Vertua®, part of Cemex’s ‘Future in Action’strategy to combat climate change. Their dedication to transforming the construction industry into a circular one and creating secondary construction materials is crucial in achieving our goal of increasing the use of construction and demolition waste and reusing high-quality construction products.
Recycled aggregates are reprocessed materials, such as concrete, previously used in construction. Reprocessing includes crushing, screening, or sorting the finished products to meet the required standards, guidelines and specifications. At Cemex Poland, the processes of obtaining recycled aggregates and their delivery to the customer are subject to strictly defined procedures, guaranteeing high-quality aggregates and their safe use. The Reincarnate project promotes circular practices, including the reuse of building materials like aggregates at a high quality for future use.
Moving towards closed-loop materials with Cemex Poland recycled aggregates provides several environmental, social and economic benefits:
- Protecting natural resources: using recycled aggregates, we protect natural resources, safeguarding them for years to come and reducing or avoiding their massive exploitation.
- Reducing carbon footprint: by using this recycled material locally instead of transporting raw materials over long distances, we reduce the impact of CO2 emissions of transport.
- Saving costs: material-efficient and economical construction waste management represents significant savings.
- Obtaining building certifications’ points: recycled materials also provide additional points when applying for certification in multi-criteria assessment schemes for sustainable buildings.
- Reducing construction waste: by substituting natural aggregates with recycled aggregates, we reduce the negative impact on the environment while at the same time contributing to the reduction of construction waste.
“Enriching our offer with this type of aggregates was a natural step for Cemex Polska, expanding our product portfolio with new solutions for sustainable construction” says Piotr Karbownik, Product Management Team Manager at Cemex Poland.
As part of our Horizon Europe project, our partner is working on developing solutions to increase the lifespan of buildings and minimise construction and demolition waste. This initial success demonstrates that we can increase the utilisation of certain materials such as aggregates, which is currently quite low in the construction sector.
Now, the goal is to create machine-learning techniques that can analyse past laboratory data on recycled materials. These techniques will help us determine the properties of these materials, including compressive strength, workability, durability, and carbon footprint. We will consider regional and national datasets to account for the unpredictable nature of recyclables. With these methods, we can optimise material compositions, like these recycled aggregates, based on their properties.
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