Two new recycling plants to crush cement for reuse from Turkey earthquake

Two state-of-the-art recycling facilities are being built in Turkey to process the 200Mt of debris produced by the earthquakes in February 2023. Japan has signed an agreement with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) for two rubble recycling plants to remove asbestos and other hazardous waste, separate out scrap metal and other recyclable materials, and crush cement from the debris for reuse as paving and building materials, reports Nikkei Asia.

According to the UNDP, previous disasters show that up to 90 per cent of building rubble can be recycled. “Recycled rubble can serve as a vital raw material for the massive reconstruction effort that lies ahead. And the longer we wait, the greater the risk that debris finds its way to inappropriate locations,” said UNDP Resident Representative, Louisa Vinton. Since the earthquakes earlier this year, hundreds of thousands of truckloads of rubble have been moved to temporary storage sites, where steel rebar is already being stripped from concrete debris.

The recycling project, expected to be complete within a year, will see the construction of two processing facilities equipped with industrial-scale crushers, magnetic separators and belt conveyors, along with mobile crushers to handle debris at smaller storage sites.