RE-CON ZERO EVO, the Mapei admixture used to recover returned concrete, was awarded First Prize in the Circular Economy category as part of the 2019 Sustainable Development Awards, an initiative of the Sustainable Development Foundation and Ecomondo, in collaboration with the Circular Economy Network.

Now at its 11^th edition, the 2019 Sustainable Development Awards, under the patronage of the Ministry for the Environment and the Protection of Land and Sea, received the Medal of the President of the Republic.

The prize-giving ceremony took place on Thursday 7^th November in the presence of the President of the Awards Committee, Edo Ronchi, and all of the jury.
During the ceremony, the First Prizes in the Green City and Renewable Energy categories were also awarded.

“The aim of this Prize – said Edo Ronchi, President of the Sustainable Development Foundation –is to promote and publicise the good practices and successful technologies adopted by the green economy in Italy. This year’s edition had another large rose of participating candidates to choose from and to select only 10 of them for each sector was not an easy task for the team of experts from the Awards Committee. In fact, we registered a marked increase in the green quality of many initiatives, which gives us hope for the future”.

RE-CON ZERO EVO represents an excellent example of a circular economy because it helps reduce the amount of waste sent for landfill and, what is more, the amount of raw materials extracted from the ground and processed is much lower, resulting in a reduction in energy consumption and CO₂.

Thanks to its special formulation, RE-CON ZERO EVO is used to recover concrete returned from site directly in cement trucks and transform it into aggregates that can be used to replace natural aggregates; either partially when used to mix concrete or completely when used to make embankments or sublayers.

“Today, thanks to RE-CON ZERO EVO, there is now the certainty that all returned concrete can be recovered and reused, by means of a process of industrial transformation based on the principles of a circular economy, to produce aggregates with all the technical and environmental requirements for its correct use in the production of concrete and in other civil engineering works”, declared Giorgio Ferrari, R&D Group Leader – HPSS Mapei.

Apart from this particular technology, there are other solutions for mixing concrete using aggregates containing clay and/or recycled aggregates from demolition work: RE-CON AGG100 and RE-CON AGG200.

Also at Ecomondo, and again on the subject of a circular economy, Mapei held two presentations: Circular Economy and Made in Italy: how the business model in the chemicals sector is changing, presented by Mikaela Decio, Mapei Environmental Sustainability Lead, in collaboration with Federchimica, and Businesses between sustainability and the circular economy - How to measure how “circular” businesses really are and drive the development of ideas and opportunities to implement a path to a circular economy and sustainability at both company level and across the entire sector, presented by Marco Mazzetti, Environmental Sustainability Mapei, in collaboration with the Green Economy Observatory (GEO) Bocconi.