Last Tuesday, October 25, TECNALIA – partner of RECONMATIC Project – organized the "2nd Conference on circular economy and sustainability in construction" in Madrid. The conference opened the debate on the problems faced by the construction sector in its effort to apply the principles of sustainability and safeguard the environment. RECSO, also a partner of RECONMATIC Project also attended the Conference with an oral presentation.
The welcome and introduction was delivered by Alberto Silleras -Director of TECNALIA Madrid-, Pilar González Gotor - Head of the Department of Institutional Promotion and Territorial Cooperation at the CDTI (Government of Spain)- and Ana Isabel Cremades Rodríguez, -General Director of Research and Technological Innovation (Community of Madrid).
The conference was divided into two sessions. The first one, entitled "Circular Economy in the construction sector", presented and discussed topics with a global vision of the circular economy , including the environmental and urban planning of the construction of a new neighborhood in Madrid (Madrid Nuevo Norte) that will allow validating circular economy solutions in the region on a real scale. Madrid Nuevo Norte has established a very ambitious plan for the use of construction and demolition waste and future management of the energy and environmental resources of the area in order to achieve minimum consumption thereof and, in turn, to generate maximum circularity in water resources. The session also included a presentation on how to close circularity in construction products and the support and existence of European technical standards and references for circular economy. The presentation "The challenges of closing the cycle of construction products" was given by Iñigo Vegas, Director of Construction and Biobased Products of TECNALIA.
The second session dealt with good practices in the circularity of construction products and the problems of this sector. We could learn about the way circularity is applied to plasterboard (by KNAUF company) and rock wool (by ROCKWOLL company). A project on the circularity of CDW in the Community of Madrid (SURGE AMBIENTAL – SACYR GREEN) and a summary of success stories related to several projects, demonstrating the efficient large-scale recovery of mineral waste (TECNALIA), were presented.
This second session also included a joint presentation of two of the RECONMATIC Project partners, TECNALIA and RECSO. Javier Llorente Muñoz, director of Recso, and Alfonso Arevalillo, Researcher in Tecnalia, presented the case "Solutions for the treatment of construction and demolition waste". An introduction to RECONMATIC project was also shown to all attendees as part of the presentation.
After finishing the successful day, all attendees had the opportunity to meet and discuss their projects and ideas during a Networking lunch session.