Production of waste materials, via industrial and human activities, creates big environmental and economic problems but also opportunities to recover valuable resources. EU28 currently generates 461 million tons per year of ever more complex Construction and Demolition Waste (CDW) with average recycling rates of around 46%. There is still a significant loss of potential valuable minerals, metals and organic materials all over Europe. Considering the fact that public and private sectors have become aware of the urgency and importance of CDW recycling, the European Commission has taken initiatives towards sustainable treatment and recycling of CDW funding three tandem projects focusing on the development of an innovative and sustainable concrete recycling process. To that end, this article will firstly present the main achievements and ongoing activities for developing the innovative concrete recycling technology in the course of the EU C2CA, HISER and VEEP projects. In addition some figures related to the cost of each recycling unit process and the selling price of the recycled products are presented. @en

Ninety five percent of the construction and demolition waste is recycled in the Netherlands. Most of it is used for low value applications such as road base materials; the use of secondary material in buildings is still less than 3%7. In order to recover waste for higher value applications, enhancing selective demolition and waste management practices is of crucial importance. In this study Life Cycle Assessment and Life Cycle Costing of a demolition project in Almere was carried out to identify the environmental and financial hotspots in the selective demolition and waste management in the Dutch context. Results suggest that (1) the best practice selective demolition and (2) the substitution of virgin concrete aggregate with secondary aggregate processed by Advanced Dry Recovery (ADR) system, will lead to environmental and financial improvements compared to the business as usual practice. On the building level, the advantage is mainly due to connecting the demolition and the re-development projects, which maximizes local reuse of old building components in the new building. The key of success for selective demolition is pre-audit to identify and connect to the market for material reuse. This is a direction that BIM (building information modeling) technology can contribute. With regards to the ADR concrete aggregate manufacturing, it was found that the transport distance for aggregate supply was the largest contributor to the environmental impacts and costs. Therefore it is important to locate ADR facilities next to concrete manufactures and/or provide ADR service on- site. @en