African Design Magazine February 2016 | Page 70

REDUCING RECON REUSING 2016 RECYCLING... Over the last decade cement & concrete industries worldwide have embraced responsible manufacturing practices. Sustainability has become a given – no longer a special item on the agenda. Yet the quest to minimise waste and to reduce landfill remains a priority to address the onslaught on our environment T he Green Building Council of South Africa is promoting the use of recycled materials in construction and offers credits to those who reduce, reuse and recycle materials wherever possible. The on-site recycling of construction rubble such as concrete is fast becoming a cost-effective solution and a growing business option. Construction materials are increasingly judged by their ecological characteristics. Concrete recycling is gaining importance because it protects natural resources and eliminates the need for disposal by using the readily available concrete as an aggregate source for new concrete or other applications. Environmentally, it has to be the way to go, to reduce the need to dump waste materials onto landfill sites, which are rapidly coming to the end of their lives. Readers can learn more about what is being done and what could be done to increase the use of recycled concrete, at Recon 2016, a one-day seminar being presented by the Concrete Society of Southern Africa in four centres in the country, namely, Cape Town, Port Elizabeth, Durban and Johannesburg (Kempton Park), from the 7th to the 10th March 2016 respectively. The programme is extensive and comprehensive, and includes a speaker from the LafargHolcim Group in France bringing the very latest technolgy and thinking on this subject. The full programme content is: • Myths and truths around concrete recycling – Bryan Perrie, The Concrete Institute • A secondary materials economy in construction and demolition waste – opportunities and challenges in concrete – Kirsten Barnes, GreenCape • Sustainable concrete, the European experience – Mark Tomlinson, LafargeHolcim Group • Using Recycled construction waste in concrete – a sustainable approach to For more information, or to register for this 70 africandesignmagazine.com