Invited Lecture – Waste Reuse for Geotechnical Applications
Waste generated by various human activities increases continuously all over the world, while disposal areas are becoming scarce and environmental requirements, more stringent. Consequently, there is a general search for alternatives to apply waste reuse in agriculture, industry, and infrastructure construction. Waste reuse has also emerged as an important application area of Environmental Geotechnics, an interest enhanced by the recent perception that soils and rocks are natural resources to be preserved. There are many technical challenges for the use of waste as geomaterials, besides a certain difficulty of acceptance by the many actors involved in earthworks, from designers to environmental authorities, including the expected customers. This lecture will try to address some of these aspects by discussing examples of current research.