REcycling mineral WOol waste into high-value products

Introduction

The LIFE ReWo project addresses the urgency to find alternative and more sustainable management pathways for mineral wool waste, which is today almost entirely classified as hazardous waste and thus can only be managed by authorized landfills for final storage.

Current Challenges

Very few attempts to find new ways to manage mineral wool waste have been proposed so far. However, all of them are promoted by big producers to recycle their own production and installation scraps and leftovers.

Project Objectives

The LIFE ReWo project aims instead to introduce and demonstrate an innovative sustainable and local recycling process to manage hazardous mineral wool collected by waste management companies and to reduce the actual strong dependency on foreign landfills.

Innovative Process

LIFE ReWo will deliver a new End of Waste transformation process based on thermal inertization of mineral wool waste and recycling of the inert secondary raw material obtained, namely ReWo, to produce new high-value products in a variety of industry sectors.

Expected Outcomes

The successful implementation and replication of the project results will make it possible to:

1. Halve the quantity of mineral wool waste currently transported from Italy to foreign landfills.
2. Reintroduce the ReWo secondary raw material in the market, replacing natural mineral resources in production.
3. Avoid importing raw materials over long distances and reduce the risk of supply in the event of blocking of exports.

Future Plans

By 5 years after the end of the project, we will progressively install 3 ReWo plants, achieving a 45% reduction of inappropriately managed mineral wool waste in Italy and more than 14M€ in positive EBITDA.