To reach the targets of climate protection, to reduce environmental pollution and to ensure a sustainable economic development the European Union strives for reforming the European economy into a recycling economy. In the Directive Natura 2000 the European Commission requests the protection of the biodiversity with a restriction of the intensive use of landscape being conceded as a priority.
To avoid waste the European Union laid down binding recycling quota for the member states of the European Union in the amended EU Waste Framework Directive which entered into force in 2010. The recycling quota for construction and demolition waste is on average to be increased to 70 % of the waste produced until 2020. It is the aim to produce high-quality construction products of construction waste in the sense of a closed cycle.
Recycling is indispensable
The European states are requested to promote the use of recycled building materials to ensure a minimum recycling quota of 70 % for mineral building waste. Thus, environment will be protected in multiple respects. On the one hand, the use of landscape will go down by reducing dumping areas, on the other hand high-quality recycled building materials will be an equally good substitute for natural building materials, thus contributing to a protection of landscape by reducing extraction areas and pits respectively.
By recycling building materials on site or in the nearer region big quantities of CO2 are saved which otherwise would be released by removing waste and supplying natural building materials frequently over long distances. Thus, recycling of building materials may also pay a remarkable contribution to climate protection.
All these advantages may be financially assessed and will result in a further advantage of cost reduction which is not to be underestimated. In particular, in the present economic crisis a reduction of costs is a compelling task for the financial manager of each commune or city who thinks in a consciously sustainable way.
Recycling as a sustainable economic segment
Sustainable management means reaching a qualitative growth without polluting the environment. No other branch of economy recycling of building materials combines economic growth with environmental protection. Recycling of building materials creates workplaces. According to estimates around 50,000 workplaces are created or secured by consistently separating residual building masses and recycling of mineral waste at a scale of 900 million tons a year in Europe.
The cost advantages connected with the use of recycled building materials as against the use of natural building materials in the framework of infrastructural measures are to be regarded as a further positive effect on national economy. Recycling of waste covering notably in large transport projects such as e.g. renewing of trunk roads and motorways represents the by far most economic and unique ecologically acceptable solution.