Urban Mining

More than a dozen CRC members joined us on a tour of the Urban Mining (UM) facility in Beacon Falls. The team at UM has developed a patented process to take MRF glass, which has been a materials management challenge for decades, and create a beneficial material. Their product, Pozzotive, is a ground glass pozzolan and industrial filler made from 100% recycled post-consumer glass. It is a safer, sustainable and higher-performing material that dramatically reduces embodied CO2 emissions in concrete.

It can replace up to 50% of cement in concrete, reducing embodied CO2 emissions on a nearly ton-for-ton basis. Because concrete is the most abundant construction material in the world, the beneficial environmental impact of Pozzotive® in concrete is dramatic.

The process produces a more durable, longer-lasting and higher-performing concrete that significantly improves its resistance to chloride penetration, sulfate attack, efflorescence and freeze thaw cycles.

Another benefit comes from the fact that this material is produced from 100% post-consumer glass, harvested and processed regionally, and used in local, sustainable building projects. This reduces transportation emissions and costly landfills and creates an optimal 'circular economy. Tour participants learned of glass picked up in Stamford, processed in Beacon Falls, turned into cement by O&G, a Connecticut company, and used in the library in New Canaan and the Ox Ridge school in Darien.

Connecticut's innovation history and our current environmental challenges came together here to help our state solve a materials management problem.