Trends in Waste Utilization in Construction
A special issue of Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050).
Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 August 2021) | Viewed by 3379
Special Issue Editor
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Assessing, understanding, and responding to the recognized serious and urgent climate change (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) risks and impacts on the worldwide civil infrastructure, particularly roads (World Road Association), has resulted in the environmental, technical, economic, and sustainability evaluation, with considerable integrated advances, of the bulk and binder replacement, reduction, reuse, and recycling of marginal, residual, byproduct, and waste materials in construction and maintenance.
The scope for these activities to reduce the carbon footprint in a sustainable manner is very large for materials such as aggregates (sand, gravel, and crushed rock), the non-renewable construction material with the largest tonnage, which faces shortages in places of increasing urban demand; its worldwide consumption amounts to some 5.5 billion tonnes per year, including enough concrete to construct a wall 27 metres wide and 27 metres high around the equator. Many of these construction materials’ related sustainability activities are not particularly new. The Paris 1978 OECD/ PIARC/RILEM/ANRED/ASTM/RTAC/USEPA/FHWA first International Conference on the Use of Byproducts and Waste in Civil Engineering dealt with the following: waste asphalt and portland cement concretes; blast furnace, steel, and nonferrous slags; fly ashes; kiln dusts; incinerator and bottom ashes; sludges and residual sulphates (phosphogypsum); byproduct sulphur; mining and metallurgical process wastes; waste glass; and used tires. While still too much waste asphalt and portland cement concretes is still unfortunately landfilled, environmentally friendly (LCA), sustainable (LEED), economic (LCCA), proven reuse technology is readily available and has been demonstrated worldwide, such as hot-mix asphalt plant reclaimed asphalt pavement (RAP) recycling; hot-in place asphalt pavement recycling; cold in-place asphalt pavement recycling (making old asphalt concrete the most recycled product in the United States in tonnage); and crushed concrete pavement for granular base. In parallel with research and enhanced implementation of the wide range of byproducts and waste materials outlined, particularly increasing binder (cementitious) applications over bulk applications to decrease carbon footprints and to take advantage of favourable power densities (reduced fossil fuel use through using more renewable, nuclear, and hydroelectricity power, EROEI), there are significant sustainability contributing materials of interest being developed and/or extended in use, such as decarbonizing metal smelting and manufacturing, and other key construction material production industries such as cement and chemicals (IEA); more energy efficient material transportation and construction equipment; portland limestone cement (PLC, developed and widely used in Canada); low-carbon aluminum; low-carbon steels; enhanced metallurgical coal use and coking byproduct use; use of reclaimed engine oil bottoms (REOB); use of roofing shingle manufacturing wastes (MSM) and waste shingles (RAS); use of waste cooking oils; pollutant capture (“smog-eating”) pavement materials; and reflective cool roof and asphalt pavement (high albedo) materials and processes. All of this will contribute to essentially building a sustainable construction sector in a world of finite resources and climate change mitigation.
Dr. John Emery
Guest Editor
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Keywords
- climate change on civil infrastructure
- waste materials in construction and maintenance
- reduce the carbon footprint
- sustainable construction material
- energy efficient material transportation and construction equipment
