Introduction
The versatility of concrete as well as its proven economic track record, has shortened construction time and reduced costs significantly, and is now the most used building material in the world. In Denmark alone, 1.5 tons is used per capita per year. This number is not expected to decrease any time soon with the big infrastructural projects that are underway or in the pipeline the coming years.
Concrete is a costly material in CO2 terms. It is mostly the production of cement that burdens our environment with CO2 emissions and thereby contributes negatively to the greenhouse effect.
Cement production accounts for approx. 6% of global CO2-emissions from human activity!
If you take a look at statistics for concrete recycling, at first glance it looks promising with a recycling factor of almost 100%. But if you look further into how the concrete actually is recycled, the story is quite different. Usually concrete is crushed and used as road aggregate. If recycling is not possible or economically viable it is often landfilled. This is an obvious degradation of a product that has a huge amount of CO2 invested in it, an investment that is mostly or completely lost at deconstruction.
At Lendager Group we work towards a world without waste and continually develop materials and building components with the established goal of prolonging the lifetime of materials and closing the loops within the construction industry. In this proces we see a huge potential for recycled concrete and will in the coming years be working hard to reimagine concrete as a sustainable material.