Summary

Waste Materials in Construction contains papers from the first international conference on the environmental implications of construction with waste materials held in Maastricht in November, 1991. The three key themes of the conference are technical options for the application of waste materials in products for the construction industry, the resulting chemical and environmental aspects thereof, and legislation policies as they pertain to waste management. There has been a great deal of laboratory testing carried out in several countries on the impact of waste-derived products on the environment since most of these products are used in close contact with the soil ( eg. road construction). There is however, no consensus as to the methodologies possible for assessing the environmental behaviour of waste residue and the consequences of using them nor for developing standards to ensure environmentally safe re-use. The first half of the conference addresses this problem of lack of consensus. The second half deals with technical solutions and procedures to use waste materials for the production of construction materials.