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wienerberger’s Top 10 Arguments for a Circular Economy and Resource Efficiency
Sustainability is firmly embedded in the wienerberger Group’s strategy. One of the three main pillars of wienerberger’s Sustainability Strategy 2023 is the circular economy.
wienerberger’s building materials and infrastructure solutions have extremely long service lives of 200 years and more. There are countless examples ranging from the famous buildings of Vienna’s Ringstrasse to single family homes and apartment blocks to wastewater systems made of ceramic piping.
Due to this longevity the ecological impact of production (consumption of raw material and energy, emissions) is “depreciated” over a very long period of time. Resource efficiency should therefore always be viewed in relation to the duration of use.
To improve the thermal insulation properties of clay blocks, organic pore-forming agents are added to the clay. These additives burn during firing, leaving behind fine pores that improve insulation. These pore-forming agents come from waste or byproducts from other industrial processes, such as sawdust from the sawmill industry or waste cellulose fibers from the paper industry: they are used as valuable secondary raw materials in brick manufacturing. As well as enhancing the product properties this makes a valuable contribution to the circular economy.
At the Wienerberger Virtual Lab our products are optimized with the help of computer simulations. For example, we were able to optimize the cross-section of roof tiles to reduce the consumption of material and energy during the firing process without compromising the product characteristics. Clay blocks and facing bricks have been similarly optimized to minimize resource consumption. In addition, wienerberger is steadily driving down the amount of energy consumed in production by fine-tuning the firing and drying process.
wienerberger roof tiles, pavers and clay bricks can also be reused. Roof tiles are given a second chance in the renovation of historic buildings and even pavers can be cleaned and reused provided they were laid in a sand bed. Old clay bricks are in high demand for building wine cellars and in garden design.
Brick rubble can also be used in the production of new bricks. For this, the rubble must be cleaned of cement and concrete residues, broken up and screened. Up to 15% of recycled bricks can be used without impairing product quality.
However, the efficient infrastructure necessary to implement closed loop recycling on a large scale is still lacking. So-called “urban mining” is therefore considered an important source of valuable raw materials for the future.
For many years, recycled brick material, i.e., cleaned, broken and screened demolition material has been successfully used in many areas of application. Take the world of sport for example: bricks broken during production are ground up by wienerberger and marketed as tennis court sand. Dust from the production of plane-ground blocks is used as a binder in the production of concrete products and can thus partially replace cement. Among other things, brick chips are also used as an aggregate in the manufacturing of precast concrete elements or cement clinker and also as bulk material in civil engineering. Last but not least, brick chips are a popular plant substrate.
wienerberger plays an active role in recycling with its research and development projects. These include the Belgian-Dutch initiative Cerafill to develop recycled crushed bricks as an additive for the production of facing bricks, the roof tile recycling project in Germany and the Biobrick project in Austria. The goal of the latter is to create a new raw material for accessories based on recycled bricks in combination with biopolymers/geopolymers. Two recycling research projects were recently successfully carried out together with our subsidiary Semmelrock. For more: Semmelrock: From Paver to Paver.
In addition to its own research activities, wienerberger also cooperates with renowned research institutes to obtain fresh stimulus from external partners, for example the Brick and Tile Research Institute in Essen in a project to replace cement with brick dust or the partnership with the IAB in Weimar on a project to recycle bricks filled with insulation material. More information on the extraordinary success of our collaboration with the AIT can be found here: Brick as a Chance for the Climate.
Education and an understanding of resource efficiency and the circular economy are crucial to raise awareness among customers, partners, and suppliers. In this spirit, wienerberger is working closely with the European Ceramic Industry Association Cerame Unie and the Austrian Chambers of Commerce (Fachverband Steine & Keramik). Cerame Unie recently published a brochure as well as a webinar cycle on this topic. More here: CU on the Circular Economy
Ultimately, it is policymakers who must establish the necessary framework for a circular economy in the construction sector. This involves data transparency for waste flows, building regulations and technical building codes, anchoring the principle of deconstruction of buildings, as well as the technical requirements for recycling building materials.
© Uwe Strasser
