Exploring the opportunities for reuse of municipal Construction and Demolition (C&D) wastes in concrete

The sustainable practices in the built environment are based on conservation of resources, such as minimum use of material, energy and water. Disposal of construction waste poses major challenge to the municipal administration of the developing countries. The fast urbanization and rapid construction in these countries has generated substantial volume of construction wastes. There are many options for the disposal of construction wastes. One of such options is to utilize these wastes as aggregates for concrete. The reuse of such aggregates in the concrete would reduce the disposal costs of construction wastes on one hand and burden on natural resources in terms of resource harvesting on the other hand. In this research work, the construction wastes collected from the municipal sources have been segregated, graded and utilized as aggregates in cement concrete. Considering different percentages of recycled aggregates, various concrete mixtures were prepared and tested to determine their compressive strengths for evalauating suitability of the concrete mixtures for construction purposes. The test results indiacte that the recycled aggregates can be used for producing plain concrete mixtures for mass concreting and construction of pavements and walkways. (C) 2014 Sharif University of Technology. All rights reserved.