Displaying items by tag: landfill

China: Eaton and Langham hotels have collaborated with Green Island Cement to transform 8t of oyster shells into a sustainable cement alternative, sourcing 80% of the required limestone for cement.

Amie Lai Gor, general manager of sustainability at Great Eagle Holdings, parent company of the two hotels, said "We brought together like-minded partners to repurpose oyster shells as a sustainable raw material alternative for cement production. Our goal is to encourage more hotels and restaurants to participate, diverting more discarded oyster shells from landfills through upcycling.”

Raymond Cheung Wai-man, division manager at Green Island Cement, highlighted past challenges of separating the shells from impurities like mud and residual meat, which initially deterred the project.

Lai Gor added that future plans include working with local universities to assess the carbon reduction potential of substituting limestone with oyster shells in cement production. Despite the higher costs—tenfold compared to traditional limestone—Cheung believes that scaling up could significantly lower expenses.

Serbia: Lafarge Serbia will open a new €110m plant in Obrenovac to produce cement from thermal power plant ash, with the aim to address Serbia's waste management problem, according to a government announcement on 5 August 2024. A 2019 report by the European Environmental Agency found that Serbia has around 100 municipal landfills and over 3000 illegal dumpsites.

Lafarge Serbia executive Dimitrije Knjeginjic said "This production will benefit Serbia and its economy, and it is absolutely acceptable from an environmental point of view because it solves the problem of ash landfills."

Oman: Oman's solid waste management entity, Be'ah, has reported progress in its strategy to transition solid waste from landfill disposal to refuse derived fuel (RDF), according to Oman Daily Observer.

In 2023, Be'ah launched initiatives focusing on transforming waste into RDF, electrical and electronic waste and green waste. The company has signed an agreement with Oman Cement Company to provide tyre derived fuel for its energy needs, eventually expanding to include RDF. A memorandum of understanding (MoU) was signed with Oman Cement during Oman Sustainability Week to explore the utilisation of RDF as an additional alternative fuel source, according to the company’s 2023 sustainability report.

Chair of Be’ah, Ahmed al Subhi, said "We take pride in our strategic resource management initiatives, having set ambitious targets for transitioning to a circular economy, including achieving 60% waste utilisation by 2025 and 80% by 2030.”

New Zealand: Golden Bay, New Zealand's sole cement producer and a division of Fletcher Building, is advancing its sustainability goals at its Portland plant near Whangārei. The plant has been incorporating old tyres and treated timber in its production process since 2021, with the Ministry for Environment helping fund US$10m of the US$15.5m to upgrade the plant for the project. The plant uses tyres to replace 55-60% of the coal required, and plans to eliminate coal use by 2030. The facility has increased its use of recycled tyres from 15,000t to 30,000t/yr and is aiming for 40,000t/yr. The government’s Tyrewise programme supports tyre recycling, with the plant also investing in an on-site shredder. Upcoming projects include substituting coal with non-recyclable materials like old carpets and plastics, targeting a 30% reduction in emissions. Construction has already started on the project and it is expected to be completed by the end of 2024, according to the New Zealand Herald.

Manufacturing manager Kelly Stevens said, "We’re diverting 100,000t/yr of waste that would’ve gone to landfill.”

Australia: Veolia ANZ and ResourceCo have secured a contract to supply over 1Mt of refuse derived fuel (RDF) from their Adelaide facility to Adbri Cement's Birkenhead plant, aiming to replace natural gas and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. According to Veolia, around 1.5Mt of waste will be diverted from landfill during the course of the contract.

Brett Brown, chief operating officer at Adbri, said "Adbri has pioneered the use of RDF in Australia. Cement manufacturing is energy intensive, and the use of alternative fuels is one of the levers we are using to reduce our emissions as part of our goal of net zero by 2050."

Indonesia: The Jakarta administration has commenced the construction of the Rorotan refuse derived fuel (RDF) plant on a 7.8-hectare site in North Jakarta, aiming to process 2,500t/day of waste. The US$75m project is funded from the 2024 regional budget and is expected to be completed by December 2024 and start operations in early 2025. The city of Jakarta produces nearly 8,000t/day of waste, the majority of which goes to the Bantar Gebang landfill in West Java. The facility will convert 35-40% of the waste processed into about 875t/day of alternative fuels.

The Rorotan facility is the second RDF plant initiated by the Jakarta administration, following the Bantar Gebang facility, which began operations in 2023. This new facility marks a shift from the planned waste-to-energy incinerator in Sunter, which was cancelled due to high costs and bureaucratic delays.

Acting Jakarta governor Heru Budi Hartono said "This technology is still a very small part of our larger efforts to address the city's waste problem."

Head of the Jakarta Environment Agency Asep Kuswanto said "The RDF can become another source of revenue for the city, as we can sell the alternative fuel from the facility to industry."

Cementos Molins has been celebrating the first anniversary this week of its alternative raw materials unit at its Sant Vicenç dels Horts plant near Barcelona. It has processed 75,000t of waste since September 2022 when the site started up. More is yet to come as the unit has a production capacity of up to 200,000t/yr. The facility receives waste in coarse, granular, powder and sludge formats. Waste from concrete plants is crushed and screened to produce recycled aggregate. Industrial and construction waste is dosed and homogenised to produce alternative raw materials for cement production.

Global Cement Weekly has covered construction and demolition waste (CDW) a couple of times already so far in 2023. A number of cement producers are investing in the sector - including Holcim, Heidelberg Materials, CRH, Cemex – by developing technology, buying up other companies, setting up internal CDW divisions and so on. Holcim and Heidelberg Materials have been the more obviously active participants over the past six months based on media coverage. In September 2023 Holcim France commissioned the Saint-Laurent-de-Mûre alternative raw materials plant and Holcim Group invested in Neustark, a company promoting technology to sequester CO₂ in CDW. In August 2023 Lafarge Canada also completed the first stage of a pilot project to use CDW in cement production at its St. Constant plant in Quebec. Heidelberg Materials meanwhile announced in October 2023 that a forthcoming upgrade to its Górażdże cement plant in Poland would include a new CDW recycling unit and in September 2023 it launched a CDW division for its subsidiary Hanson UK.

Previously we have described how the European Union (EU) has set recovery targets for CDW. However, McKinsey & Company published research in March 2023 setting out the economic case for cement and concrete companies looking at CDW. It estimated that “an increased adoption of circular technologies could be linked to the emergence of new financial net-value pools worth up to roughly Euro110bn by 2050.” It is not a certainty and there is risk involved, but adopting circular practices is one way to reduce this risk. It then went on to predict that recirculating materials and minerals could generate nearly Euro80bn/yr in earnings before interest, taxation, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) for the cement and concrete sectors by 2050. The biggest portion of this could come from using CDW in various ways such as a clinker replacement or as an aggregate in concrete production, or the use of unhydrated cement ‘fines.’ Capturing and using CO₂ and increasing alternative fuels (AF) substitution rates would have a financial impact but not to the same scale.

Graph 1: CO₂ abatement cost via circular technologies for cement and concrete sectors. Source: McKinsey & Company.

Graph 1 above puts all of the McKinsey circular technology suggestions in one place with the prediction that all of these methods could reduce CO₂ emissions from cement and concrete production by 80% in 2050 based on an estimated demand of 4Bnt/yr. The first main point they made was that technologies using CO₂, such as curing ready-mix or precast concrete, can create positive economic value at carbon prices of approximately Euro80/t of CO₂. Readers should note that the EU emissions Trading Scheme CO₂ price has generally been above Euro80t/yr since the start of 2022. The second point to note is that using CDW could potentially save money by offering CO₂ abatement at a negative cost through avoiding landfill gate fees and reducing the amount of raw materials required. This is dependent though on government regulation on CO₂ prices, landfill costs and so on.

Cement producers have been clearly aware of the potential of CDW for a while now, based on the actions described above and elsewhere, and they are jockeying for advantage. These companies are familiar with the economic rationale for AF and secondary cementitious materials (SCM) in different countries and locations. CDW usage is similar but with, in McKinsey’s view, existing CO₂ prices, landfill costs, and regulatory frameworks all playing a part in the calculations. Graph 1 is a prediction but it is also another way of showing the path of least resistance to decarbonisation. It is cheaper to start with AF, SCMs and CDW rather than barrelling straight into carbon capture. The beauty here is that cement and concrete sold, say, 50 years ago is now heading back to the producers in the form of CDW and it still has value.

Canada: The district council of Capital Regional District (CRD) says that it expects to resume sending biosolids to Lafarge Canada's Richmond cement plant in early June 2023. This follows a reported reduction in production at the unit in 2023 and 2022, according to the Times Colonist newspaper. The 1.1Mt/yr cement plant previously used biosolids supplied by the CRD as an alternative fuel in its cement production. However, during the current hiatus the biosolids have been sent to landfill instead.

The Richmond cement plant is the site of the CO₂MENT carbon capture and utilisation project. The project proceeded to its third phase, which consists of a capture capacity expansion and the installation of a liquefaction plant, in May 2023.

Canada: Lehigh Cement has initiated the administrative process to begin the use of alternative fuels (AF) in cement production at its Picton cement plant in Ontario. Under the company’s plans, the plant will substitute 200t/day of AF for coal and petcoke at the plant. Possible AF sources include excess seed from farm feed production in Ontario. The Picton cement plant previously reduced its CO₂ emissions per tonne of cement by 20% through assorted sustainability initiatives.

Picton plant manager Carsten Schraeder said that the move will support Canada’s 2030 emission reduction plan, and also take pressure off landfill sites.

US: Eco Material Technologies has won a contract with Georgia Power to mine 600,000t/yr from the energy company’s Plant Bowen ash dump in Cartersville, Georgia. Eco Material Technologies will use the ash to produce its 99% reduced-CO₂ building materials, including an alternative cement with 20% greater compressive strength than ordinary Portland cement (OPC) after 28 days, according to the company.

Grant Quasha, CEO of Eco Material Technologies, said "As the largest partnership of its kind in the US, this project will not only use material from landfills and ash ponds, but also keep millions of tonnes of CO₂ from going into the atmosphere."