Ukraine’s invasion has left behind roughly 1.4 billion tons of rubble, and this project will turn that debris into low-carbon concrete and cement. Rebuilding Ukraine’s destroyed infrastructure is expected to cost around $400 billion—2.6 times the country’s 2022 GDP. Simply dumping the rubble and manufacturing new materials from scratch would be unsustainable and expensive. The project also tackles a hidden hazard: Ukraine was Europe’s second-largest asbestos consumer until a 2017 ban, so much of the rubble is contaminated. Current construction practices cannot safely separate asbestos-containing materials from usable concrete. The team will develop a mobile, modular plant that rapidly sorts rubble by particle size and chemical composition. Clean concrete will be crushed into recycled aggregate or turned into feedstock for low-carbon cement via electrified sintering. A decision-making tool will then recommend the best upcycling route based on local rubble quality. If successful, the approach could be applied globally—to earthquake debris, or to the growing mountains of construction waste in Western countries where infrastructure is reaching end-of-life. The project also aims to raise awareness about asbestos, circular economy practices, and gender and social equity in the construction sector.
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The Russian invasion of Ukraine has destroyed Ukraine's infrastructure through continuous shelling and missile attacks. The World Bank estimates that rebuilding Ukraine will cost 2.6 times greater than its GDP in 2022, with a cost estimated to be ~$400 billion. This involves a massive amount of construction activity, and it is imperative that it is performed in a sustainable way while reducing the cost. Destruction of Ukraine's infrastructure has created huge amounts of rubble, currently estimated to be about 1.4 billion tons as of March 2023\. This project, titled Safe, Sustainable, and Swift Reconstruction of Ukraine (S3RoU), aims to upcycle this vast number of rubbles available into low-energy and low-carbon construction materials to create a circular economy as well as develop technologies that can help the UK reach its net zero target. Ukraine's construction practices are significantly different than the UK's, specifically in terms of asbestos usage as well as utilisation of alkali-activated materials, an alternative form of concrete. Asbestos usage is widespread in Ukraine's civil infrastructure, as an asbestos ban was only implemented recently in 2017, and before that, Ukraine was Europe's second largest asbestos consumer (183,000 tons in 2005). S3RoU will ensure the safe utilisation of Ukraine's rubble and will utilise rapid characterisation techniques to separate alkali-activated materials from conventional concrete. The conventional concrete will then be separated into three different components with different particle sizes, using and developing a modular, mobile plant, that can be deployed rapidly, and utilised locally, enabling the upscaling process. The separated components will then either be used as recycled aggregate or supplementary cementitious materials for direct manufacturing of concrete or will be utilised as a feedstock for low-carbon cement manufacturing through electrified sintering processes. The environmental impact and cost of the different upcycling processes will be calculated, and finally, a tool-box will be developed to recommend upcycling processes based on the availability of suitable rubble, and its chemical composition. This will also help globally, including areas of disaster (e.g., earthquakes) and the western world, in terms of construction and demolition waste upcycling as most of their infrastructure is reaching end-of-life and needs to be recycled. This project will also work on raising awareness regarding GESI, asbestos, and the circular economy; in Ukraine and around the world, this will encourage local authorities and construction companies to take sustainability into consideration for infrastructure development and resolve gender and social inequality in this sector.
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