Workshop Title:

Up-Cycling of Various Waste Streams into High Value and High Performing Products: Towards Sustainable Development

Date:

August 29th, 2023 (GMT+1)

Organizer:

Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering, Brunel University London

Keywords:

• Waste management
• Construction and demolition waste
• Municipal solid waste
• Agricultural waste
• Bio-based materials
• Compressed strawboards

Workshop Chair:

Personal Bio:

Dr. Seyed Ghaffar is a Chartered Civil Engineer (CEng, MICE), a Member of the Institute of Concrete Technology (MICT) and a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (FHEA). He leads the 'Construction Waste Management and Valorisation (WasteValue)' research group with the aim to study the feasibility of circular economy (cradle-to-cradle), management of waste and development of environmentally-friendly construction materials/products. Dr. Ghaffar's research covers a number of construction materials, with a focus on the development of low-carbon technologies suitable for new and retrofitting applications by combining materials sciences and innovative technologies. He has been the PI or Co-I of ~£6M on 8 grants from EPSRC, British Council, and the EU H2020. Dr. Ghaffar is the Executive Editor of the Journal of Results in Engineering (Elsevier). He recently edited a book titled "Innovation in construction - A Practical Guide to Transforming the Construction Industry".

Workshop Committee Members:

Mr. Eslam Elseidy, Brunel University London, eslam.elseidy@brunel.ac.uk

Mr. Yazeed Al-Noaimat, Brunel University London, eslam.elseidy@brunel.ac.uk

Workshop Description:

Background:

Resource scarcity and depletion of natural resources are challenges that put a lot of pressure on industries such as construction. In the built environment sector, there are huge quantities of waste generated during construction and refurbishment, and/or demolition. This already is a pressing challenge. Waste can be valorised and reused for the remanufacturing of products for new projects. This will contribute to the preservation of natural resources, for example, natural aggregates for the production of concrete. Instead, recycled plastics, tire rubber, brick waste, etc., can be used to replace natural aggregates in concrete. However, the issue is their overall technical performance and service life.

Goal / Rationale:

Available resources for the infrastructure development in the built environment are vital and research should be carried out systematically to enable improve the technical specifications and durability performances of products that are made from alternative sources, i.e., end-of-life products such as waste bricks, concrete, plastics, tire rubber and glass. Recourse scarcity is going to be a big issue and therefore having secondary raw materials that can technical outperform or perform the same as primary raw materials is of outmost importance.

Scope and Information for Participants:

The emergence of circular construction and the importance of waste management is at forefront of industrial stakeholders and the governments. Circular construction and the 4R framework of Reduce, Reuse, Recycle and Recover in the waste management field provide some hope to combat some of the global challenges such as climate change, resource scarcity and global warming.

Highlights:

The workshop started with an introduction given by the Chair brief introduction to the topic. The workshop was being recorded and the attendees were allowed to ask questions during the presentation. The outline of the workshop was the following:

• Transformation of the construction industry
• Introduction to waste management
• Construction and demolition waste
• Pathways to circular construction

The topic of the workshop was of interest to the attendees as reflected by their questions during the workshop. The main points and key takeaway point of the workshop was about the need for creative ideas and thinking outside of the box to solve and combat the global challenges which the built environment is facing. Circular construction and the use of innovative technologies and ICT are the most promising tools for achieving sustainability in the built environment.

Access to Workshop:

ICEGEE 2023 Workshop -- London - YouTube

Venue:

Brunel University London, Kingston Ln, London, Uxbridge UB8 3PH, UK

VISA:

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