Environmentally-friendly reconstruction: Ukraine uses recycled construction waste to build new housing

What is the problem?

On December 15, the analytical team of the Kyiv School of Economics (KSE) published an updated assessment of documented damage to residential and non-residential real estate and other infrastructure of Ukraine. Donetsk, Kyiv, Luhansk, Chernihiv, and Kharkiv regions are among the five most affected regions in terms of housing destruction. The financial losses are colossal. For example, in the Kyiv region alone, losses from the destruction and damage of 22,800 residential buildings amount to $8.2 billion.

Russian attacks don't just kill and destroy homes – they also leave behind a pile of construction debris — bricks, concrete, glass, furniture, and possibly even asbestos, which is harmful to human health. All of it usually ends up in one mixed pile and getssent to landfills. Ukraine's Ministry of Environment estimates that the amount of destruction waste created in Ukraine by Russia's war in the past year is nearly as much as the amount of solid waste generated in the entire country in an average year — it is about 10-12 million tons.

Already-overcrowded landfills, which are over capacity, simply cannot accept new garbage – leading to spontaneous landfills. One of these is in Irpin, the Kyiv region.

Speaking about the extent of the destruction, one cannot ignore the stories of people who lost their homes. Rubryka spoke with Oleksandr from Hostomel, whom acquaintances call simply Mazai – and he calls himself homeless.

More than a year ago, a Russian missile hit Mazai's house, and later engineers concluded that the entire apartment building could not be restored. Along with his house, four more were in the same condition. All 326 apartments in the complex were uninhabitable, and about 900 people lost their homes.

Before the war, Mazai was a leather craftsman who made motorcycle covers. Everything in his apartment — four sewing machines, glues, and leather for work — burned down in the aftermath of the bombing. Nowadays, the Hostomel resident has made a new home in his garage, but nothing remains from his past life. Even Mazai's overalls were found in the garbage. Mazai's story is bitter — but, unfortunately, not unique.

However, there is a solution that is currently being made reality, solving two problems at once: finding a use for construction waste while returning people to homes. 

What is the solution?

Proskurivska Street in Hostomel currently has strange landscapes: half of the five-story buildings are covered by piles of bricks, sand, and crushed cement. The areas on both sides of the playground are fenced off.

A year and a half ago, five houses stood here, one of which Mazai lived in. The fact that there were once houses with flower beds with orange lilies is evidenced only by the lilies themselves, which miraculously sprouted through piles of rubble.

New building materials appeared here thanks to the company Neo-Eco Ukraine, created thanks to the initiative of the French mother company Neo-Eco and the support of the French government. French Neo-Eco is an engineering company specializing in the environmentally-friendly restoration of damaged buildings. It has been working for more than 17 years according to the principle of closed-cycle economy. Neo-Eco Ukraine also applies circular economy methods and chose as a pilot project the reconstruction of a military facility in Hostomel, where all processes — from the analysis of the object to the acquisition of new construction materials — were carried out according to the principles of the closed-cycle economy. The main principle of this approach is the recovery and rational consumption of resources, as well as minimizing the negative impact on the environment.

By the end of 2024, the company plans to build the first house using recycled construction waste. However, the construction may last even longer, depending on the speed of cooperation with the local administration. The new residential complex will have 450 apartments, and all apartments will be distributed primarily among the residents of the demolished buildings.

The project concept is already ready – architects from France worked on it, and it was adapted to Ukrainian standards by a local architectural company. The Hostomel project follows Carlos Moreno's concept of the 15-minute city — a residential city in which most daily needs and services such as work, shopping, education, health care, and recreation should be located within walking or cycling distance from anywhere in the city.

The apartments will have a modern layout without walk-through living rooms and small kitchens, and will meet updated standards. Individual heating, apartments without gasification, and centralized water supply are planned. The frame of buildings is composed of monolithic reinforced concrete, which significantly improves the stability of the structure in the event of impacts on it. Current conditions in Ukraine also dictate the need for bomb shelters — its function in houses will be performed by basements specially equipped for this purpose. The buildings will also have solar panel canopies over the open parking lots, providing residents a renewable energy source.

The piles you see in the photo below are no longer demolition debris or even construction debris, but a new material that will be used to make fresh concrete. All these materials were made from the debris after demolishing destroyed buildings, which was later carefully sorted and recycled.

The company began work dismantling debris in January, and in the initial stages, work was done by hand. Some of the construction waste was unsuitable for use – but this does not mean it was sent to overflowing landfills.

During their process, not even a single kilogram of debris from here was sent to landfills, not a single kilogram. Of course, due to the dilapidated condition of the buildings, some of which were half burnt, it was impossible to use all the materials formed after the dismantling. "Some hazardous materials, such as asbestos, we dispose of through local companies that hold all hazardous waste management licenses," Viktoria Shimon, project manager of Neo-Eco Ukraine, told Rubryka. Part of the recycled building materials – for example, bricks – will be reused for filling potholes in roads, constructing temporary roads or trails, and raising the level of land plots intended for development, or construction sites. Such a driveway will last for several years, and can later be used as a base for laying a permanent coating.

Materials that cannot be reused include wood — damaged or painted, glass, and plastic. All this was sorted and transferred to companies specializing in processing such materials, which can betransformed into energy or new commodities.

Processing waste into new materials occurs on site: they do not need to be transported somewhere to be processed, and therefore time and fuel can be saved. For example, the concrete blocks that made up the concrete frame of the houses were made right on site. Now they look like a pile of sand, but soon they will be turned into new material for housing.

"After dismantling, we counted the approximate amount of remaining materials. Imagine — 15 thousand tons! We will reuse approximately 90% of these materials," says Shimon.

Many harmful substances — heavy metals that remain around — are dispersed in the places of missile hits. In addition, after fires in destroyed houses, materials could absorb combustible chemicals. We asked Shimon whether it was safe to use such materials:

"Before we started, we took samples from each house to understand if they could be reused and safe. We sent these samples to a laboratory in France for analysis and found a laboratory in Lviv to compare the samples. We started the project with the confidence that there are no harmful impurities in concrete, bricks, and other materials," the project manager of the Neo-Eco Ukraine answers.

The head of Neo-Eco Ukraine, Kyrylo Chernyshuk, says: the parent company has been operating in France for over 17 years and is engaged in dismantling and recycling building materials.

"There are a lot of such projects in Europe because, fortunately, it is not possible to throw construction waste into a plantation or a field there, as is done in Ukraine," Chernyshuk continues. "At the level of legislation, if a developer dismantles an old building and builds a new one, they are obliged to reuse a certain amount of materials. It is 20-30%, but this figure constantly grows." 

Returning construction waste to a new life requires accounting for many factors, including for safety. For this purpose, recycled materials are delivered to the factories of the parent company from Ukraine, and their quality is already being examined there. According to Chernushuk, although the disposal of construction waste in Europe is expensive, it is necessary. Civic platforms in France are working on waste processing, and the process has been on the rails for a long time.

According to the project leaders, such innovative construction for Ukraine is much more expensive than traditional construction. The entire project will cost approximately €30 million to donors.

"In France, builders have no choice but to recycle materials because taking them to a landfill is much more expensive. We do not recycle construction waste, as landfills in Ukraine are a cheaper alternative," the project manager states.

However, Ukraine has a mechanism for legislative regulation of waste management, which defines the procedure for collecting and sorting demolition waste. There are some positive points: garbage should not be sent to ordinary containers for garbage collection, but must be stored in specially equipped areas. 

For example, in the Kyiv region, 62 temporary sites were set up to store such waste. According to the Ministry of Environment, 48 of them are in use as of February. Already, 140,000 tons of war waste have been collected. Sites for temporary storage are determined by the local military administration, which does not currently assess the environmental impact. There are only certain restrictions regarding the distance from certain objects:

• 2 kilometers from the water fund facilities;
• 0.5 kilometers from residential and public buildings, social infrastructure facilities;
• 0.2 kilometers — from agricultural lands, public roads, and railway tracks of the general network;
• 0.05 kilometers from the forests.

Authorities present promise that according to the order, the waste from the destruction will be sorted and processed. 

In April, the mayors of Irpin and Bucha — two badly war-battered districts near Kyiv — signed memorandums with the Waste Recycling Association of Ukraine and the Lithuanian Demolition Association. Both organizations bring together companies that collect scrap, recycle and sort construction waste and process it for reuse. For this purpose, Irpin plans to create a mobile site for processing construction waste, which will help clean up the spontaneous landfill on Soborna Street. To help with the technical aspects, Japan presented Ukraine with ten pieces of construction waste processing equipment as part of a humanitarian aid package. Three more plants for crushing bricks and concrete will soon be coming to Ukraine.

In addition, the new Waste Management Law will enter into force on July 9. The document does not contain the term "destruction waste" – but instead has certain instructions for handling "construction and demolition waste." The law proposes to carry out waste recovery operations, including preparation for reuse, including construction waste, and also regulates the creation and support of waste management facilities that carry out operations to prepare waste for reuse.

Although recycled construction waste will not always become a new house, it can serve other purposes. For example, what is in the landfill in Irpin, the local authorities plan to use to construct roads. However, there are many more real ways of using it.

In addition, non-governmental organizations are disseminating waste management information among communities. Thus, within the framework of the U-LEAD WITH EUROPE program, the NGO DESPRO created an informational brochure that offered ways to use different types of demolition waste. Suggested methods include the reuse of surviving and intact items and concrete products, such as concrete pillars or other structures, and recycling for scrap or wood. The proposed scheme clearly demonstrates what types of materials can be used in different ways.

Therefore, with the correct distribution of resources, reconstruction from the debris of destruction is not a whimsical dream but a very real prospect.