Over the years, environmental impact has become more and more important in the construction industry, so it’s not surprising that an increasing number of recycled material options are becoming available. One of the most common recycled materials in construction is concrete. We at Flesherton Concrete Products want you to be able to make informed decisions about your material choices for your construction efforts, so in this article we’ll be going over the differences between new and recycled concrete and how we use each one.
The process of making recycled concrete involves first collecting concrete from demolition sites, which must be free of wood, paper, and other trash, although rebar fragments are allowed as they can be removed using magnets. Then, the concrete is crushed in a machine, and the resulting fragments sorted by size and filtered to remove other particulates. Once this process is complete, the recycled concrete is ready to be used. Compared to creating new concrete, with fresh materials from a quarry, making recycled concrete consumes significantly less energy and resources.
It’s possible to use recycled concrete as an aggregate to create new concrete, adding strength and durability—however, we at Flesherton Concrete Products do not use recycled concrete in this way. Instead, we use our recycled concrete only as a base for roads, where it helps distribute the weight and pressure of vehicles to prevent the road itself from sinking into the ground. New concrete is preferable for many of the projects we do including footings, walls, floors, sidewalks, and many others. We hope that this article has been informative and helpful, and if you have further questions about the applications and benefits of recycled concrete, we encourage you to call our team at Flesherton Concrete Products.