Abstract

There is an ever-increasing amount of waste glass generated worldwide that is currently sent to landfill, and has a high potential for re-use. In Australia alone, the consumption of glass is 1.36 million tonnes, with the state of New South Wales producing the highest amount. Traditional landfilling and stockpiling of waste glass are not an environment-friendly solution, and the re-use of waste glass has become an important research topic in Australia and worldwide. This Project employs an experimental study to estimate waste glass re-cycling in shotcrete production. Mechanical strength and fracture properties of the new mix designs are compared against the controlled mixes at 0% waste glass inclusions. From the results, no impaired performance was recorded by substituting sand with crushed waste glass even at a high percentage ratio of up to 100%. While further research is needed, the promising early results highly encourage the applicability of crushed waste glass for sustainable shotcrete design, a topic that is yet relatively under-researched.

Introduction

Estimates show that a staggering fifty billion metric tonnes of natural sand and aggregates is being consumed all over the world every year [1]. Such unsustainable exhaustion of natural aggregates has damaged aquatic habitats, endangered animal species, and have caused beach erosion, making coastal communities vulnerable to floods and other natural disasters. If immediate actions are not taken to address the huge indiscriminate mining of non-renewable sources of beach and quarry sands, it is estimated that around 67% of southern California beaches, for instance, will disappear by the year 2100 [2]. The depletion of sand reserves has also resulted in a dramatic increase in its international trade value, and the sand price has increased almost six-fold just over the last 25 years [3, 4, 5, 6]. As a result, the emerging paradigm shift taking place is to replace natural and quarried sand with sustainable and cost-effective alternatives, like crushed waste glass through circular economy, to mitigate the environmental degradation caused by sand overexploitation at a global scale.

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