With demand growing for aggregates and industrial byproducts in low-carbon cement production, a number of pioneering projects are reshaping how demolition waste is recycled and reused.
Last week, Heidelberg Materials inaugurated several major installations at its Górazdze cement plant in Poland, including a pilot facility for reConcrete forced recarbonation. Part of the international Carbon4Minerals project, the plant uses dust from recycled concrete. Through a forced carbonation process, the material permanently captures CO2 and converts it into feedstock for new cement production. Fives was selected in 2022 to provide its Rhodax® 1000LP crusher for the Górazdze project. See our blog on this facility from earlier this month.
Heidelberg also invested in recycling infrastructure at its Katowice site last year, where a proprietary crushing system enables the selective separation of old concrete into its original components — sand, gravel, and recycled paste — for reuse in new construction.
Waste upcycling gains momentum
The recycling trend is spreading across the industry. In Australia, Boral processes over 2Mt of construction and demolition waste annually across 14 sites. Its Circular Materials Solution (CMS) diverts more than 95 per cent of incoming waste for reuse, producing materials for road bases, concrete, and asphalt.
French producer Vicat is also emerging as a leader. Through its Fifth Wall venture fund, it has invested in startups such as Concrete.ai and Optimitive, which are digitalising cement and concrete manufacturing. Its C2CA process enables the full recycling of end-of-life concrete into new concrete and low-carbon cement feedstock. A pilot in the Netherlands demonstrated only slightly higher demolition costs (15 per cent), which were virtually offset by the value of recovered materials.
Academic research at the forefront
Universities are playing a vital role in advancing recycling technologies. At Delft University of Technology, researchers developed a mobile C2CA recycling system that can process wet crushed concrete on demolition sites. Using Advanced Dry Recovery (ADR) and a Heating Air and Classification System (HAS), the technology removes impurities, dries materials, and reduces transport needs — further cutting CO2 emissions.
Thomas Petithugenin, working on the Delft University C2CA projects said: “Pre-sorting is needed for concrete recycling for it to be economically viable. In the Netherlands, for example, there’s requirements for selective demolition, so the sorting of materials is already taking place at the demolition site. Waste goes to a storage facility with crushers , where we can apply C2CA’s technology.”
Moreover, while Europe is pioneering development of C2CA, it is the fast-developing markets of India and China that are likely to have the greatest opportunities for this recycling technology.
International collaboration
Larger, cross-border initiatives are also accelerating progress. The EU’s SeRaMCo project, begun in 2018 and funded by the Interreg programme, brings together partners from Belgium, Germany, and France to convert construction and demolition waste into precast products and cement. Pilot plants in Seraing (Belgium), Saarlouis (Germany), and Moselle (France) are testing recycled cement supplied in part by Vicat’s Créchy cement plant in France, with clinker arriving at Créchy from the producer’s Chambéry (Saint-Égrève) plant.
Toward a circular future
CEMBUREAU, the European cement association, has set out a roadmap aligned with the EU’s Green Deal and Carbon Neutrality 2050 targets. It advocates for stronger support for concrete recycling as part of a true circular economy.
With cement producers, technology innovators, and academic institutions all driving forward new recycling methods, the industry is moving closer to mainstream adoption of low-carbon, circular cement solutions that could eventually replace many conventional blends.
