Recycling is not new – it has been around for at least 2,000 years and the ancient city of Pompeii was partly built from trash. But there is still much to do to achieve a truly circular economy in construction and demolition waste, says Paul Carolan.
New discoveries at Pompeii, which was abandoned in AD 79, have revealed that the Romans knew a thing or two about recycling. It turns out that part of the city was built out of trash. Just as today, waste was being sorted, separated, resold and reused in construction.
Large mounds of waste were collected from the city for sorting at the equivalent of what we would today refer to as recycling plants. These piles typically contained municipal waste, ceramic pieces, tiles and plaster.
