New Circular Economy Business Model for More Sustainable Urban Construction

Cooperation between CINDERELA and City Water Circles projects trough "Nigrad" and "Maribor Water Supply" companies

In the city of Maribor, the cooperation of enterprises that are predominantly publicly owned, and which already provide public services for residents is intensely towards fundamental principles in the transition from linear to circular economy. Only close cooperation between public companies, citizens, industry, and local self-government can lead to a successful interconnected system that optimizes resources and results - economic, environmental, and social. One good practice is the cooperation between Nigrad and Mariborski vodovod (Maribor water supply).

Nigrad is a project partner at the CINDERELA H2020 project (https://www.cinderela.eu/), focusing on building circular approaches in the construction sector that involve the recovery and use of secondary raw materials (SRM) from waste streams and demonstrating the use of secondary raw materials (SRM) at different demos: revitalization of degraded areas, road construction, and building a small facility. Mariborski vodovod (Maribor water supply) is the partner in the project CWC - City Water Circles (https://www.interreg-central.eu/Content.Node/CWC.html).

The purified wastewater from the CWC project as well as harvest rainwater will be used at NIGRAD's demos. For this purpose, two different water storage tanks for harvesting and storing water were built at the demo site. The mentioned demonstration will focus on testing the use of purified wastewater and rainwater on a practical example. NIGRAD will use this water for the production of composite materials. The test results of the use of various proportions of these two different types of water in the mixture of secondary raw materials will determine and prove the further applicability in the production of these materials.

This water will be also used to lower the level of dust in the atmosphere on the construction site.

In that way, the good practices of circular economy in the construction sector will be shown and will lead by good example towards the next steps of circular economy concepts in the city of Maribor.

More about the CWC project and the cooperation with the CINDERELA project you can learn here:

Wednesday 02 March 2022