Navarra and Aquitaine are already working on a circular economy strategy for their construction waste
Fundación Laboral de la Construcción Navarra, Gestión Ambiental Navarra-GAN-NIK and REAM, Recuperación Ambiental want, together with the cross-border entities Communauté de Communes du Haut-Béarn and Nobatek-INEF 4, and the community project RCdiGREEN, a better adaptation of their territories to climate change.
Pamplona, April 20th 2020 - The revaluation of Construction and Demolition Waste (C&DW) has become a strategic objective for the Navarra and Atlantic Pyrenees sector. Thus, some of its main stakeholders, such as Fundación Laboral de la Construcción Navarra, Gestión Ambiental Navarra-GAN-NIK and REAM, Recuperación Ambiental, together with the cross-border entities Communauté de Communes du HautBearn and Nobatek, have started working on the community project RCdiGREEN. This initiative is aimed at developing a strategy of a circular economy that will allow a better use and an optimised management of the C&DW so that both territories can better adapt to climate change.
The project, in which the Fundación Laboral de la Construcción Navarra is the lead agency, has a budget of 1,045,000.43 million euros and its activity will extend until mid-2022. RCdiGREEN is a project co-financed at 65% by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) through the Interreg V-A Spain, France, Andorra (POCTEFA 2014-2020). The objective of POCTEFA is to strengthen the economic and social integration of the Spain-France-Andorra border area.
Although the project partners have already started working on this initiative, the public presentation of RCdiGREEN in Spain has been delayed due to the crisis triggered by the Covid-19 pandemic. As soon as the pandemic is over, a presentation of the project to the sector and society will be scheduled.
C&DW, ECONOMIC VALUE
The construction industry is the main consumer of materials and generator of waste, of which more than 90% is inert. This waste is a clear priority due to its relevance in terms of volume, economic matters and materials that can be reused. But this recovery of C&DW and the analysis of its life cycle cannot be done in just any way. It is necessary to establish a strategy to implement an efficient management of these materials, in which the basis of the circular economy must be the foundation that contributes to their adaptation in an effective way.
The difficulty of opening new landfills, the opportunity to use these materials for the recovery of degraded spaces or the definitive commitment of the construction sector to rehabilitation, the use of more environmentally friendly materials and the analysis and management of the life cycle of possible construction solutions are opportunities that this project wants to consider, while working on training as the fundamental synergy to integrate this management method in construction.
For all these reasons, the construction sector in Navarra and the Atlantic Pyrenees aims to develop various pilot experiences with RCdiGREEN to demonstrate the benefits and enormous economic, social and environmental potential that construction and demolition waste can bring to both territories in terms of sustainability.
Therefore, the celebration of various informative and training meetings (conferences, breakfasts, dissemination and training actions) on both sides of the border is contemplated, along with studies on the volume of C&DW produced or the degraded spaces to which they could be allocated in order to recover them environmentally, as well as the development of various pilot experiences that will allow the analysis of the proposals developed by RCdiGREEN.