Generalitat and the cement industry coincide in promoting the principles and practices of the Circular Economy as the production methodology that is more respectful with the Environment. This has become clear again in the last meetings held, in which Mercè Rius (General Director of Environmental Quality and Climate Change), Josep Maria Tost (director of the Waste Agency of Catalonia), Lluís Ridao (director of the Catalan Water Agency), Salvador Fernández Capo and Alejandro Josa (president and secretary of Ciment Català).
These work sessions have highlighted the consensus on the energy use of waste, always respecting its hierarchy of treatment, which allows the saving of fossil fuels in cement factories and prevents the spillage – with the consequent risks of contamination of Soils and air, in addition to fire- materials that can no longer be given any other environmentally better use. Dry sludge from urban wastewater treatment plants that can not be used in agriculture with less impact, out-of-use tires with no possible destination as only material recovery or waste-derived fuels (CDR) are part of a still small catalog of products that factories use to Bake the limestone and produce cement.
The representatives of the cement industry asked the people in charge of the Generalitat to open up towards the use of waste as fuels, in line with what European countries do in environmental practices. Germany, the Netherlands or the Scandinavian countries are those that, by promoting the energy recovery of waste that can not be recycled or with environmentally worse recycling, have managed to drastically reduce (practically up to 100%) the waste that goes to landfill. In this sense, the rate of energy substitution in Catalonia (just over 30%) is barely half that of the aforementioned countries, which gives a wide margin for improvement if the Generalitat, in the future, authorizes the use of more quantity and more variety of waste for its energy use, always complying with the previous conditions. In this regard it can be said that there are no technical reasons that prevent reaching 90 or 95% of energy substitution in clinker manufacturing furnaces, with the environmental advantages that this implies, provided that the appropriate non-recyclable waste is available.