Natural stone’s industry has gone progressively widening, assuming a strategic role in worldwide economy. In 2015, the production was about 82.6 million tons with a percentage of the waste extraction and processing amounting to over 70% of the gross quantity. In the European Union, the Italian pre-eminence, as fifth leading stone country, was consolidated with over 30% of volume. The increased production of natural stone waste, as well as its impact on the environment, has boosted academic and industrial research on waste minimization. Nonetheless, a great scientific interest has also been addressed to recovery and recycling of stone slurry from quarrying activities and processing plants, particularly as fine aggregate for a broad range of low-CO2 cement-based materials or compounding with resins based on possibly biobased/recycled/biodegradable polymeric matrices or their blends.
Apropos, the STONE project aims at promoting the sustainable use of stone slurry from local quarrying and manufacturing activities – e.g. areas where «Perlato di Sicilia» (Sicily), “Pietra Lavica dell’Etna” (Sicily), «Pietra di Apricena» (Apulia) and «Marmo di Carrara» (Tuscany) are quarried -, in order to achieve:
PROJECT ACTIVITIES
Management:
Baseline:
Design:
Experimentation and validation:
Dissemination: