The Decree of 11thOctober 2017 of the Ministry of the Environment has recently been published on the Official Gazette. This Decree contains the “Minimum Environmental Criteria (MEC) for the awarding of the services of designing and realisation for the construction, renovation and maintenance of public buildings”.
The Decree is integrating part of the action plan for the environmental sustainability of the consumption of the public administration (PAN GPP) and it will allow the Contracting Authorities to reduce the environmental impact of the new buildings and of the renovation and maintenance of the existing ones, considered from a life-cycle point of view.
Among the various materials the PA is to use to respect such environmental criteria, we can find also rubber recycled from End-of-Life tyres among the thermal-acoustics insulating materials. The characteristics of elasticity, sound-absorption and thermal resistance make of ELT recycled rubber an excellent material for the limitation of the transmission of sounds and vibrations in buildings.
The Decree states that, if in the project (of new construction, renovation or requalification of a public building) the use of thermal and sound insulating materials containing rubber is provided for, it will have to be at least 60% recycled rubber. This, both in the case of insulating panels, and for crammed or spray/blown insulating elements, or they must be insulating mats.
The objective of the Decree is the one of “reducing the environmental impact on natural resources, of increasing the use of recycled materials, thus increasing waste recovery, with particular reference to demolition and building materials”. Moreover, this will contribute to the “reaching of the target of recycling at least 70% of non-dangerous building and demolition waste by 2020, as well as the products containing post-consumption materials or deriving from waste recovery, of materials coming from the disassembling of complex products and the ones deriving from the use of rubber powder from the recycling of End-of-Life tyres”.
The Decree is downloadable from the website of the Ministry of the Environment at: http://www.minambiente.it/sites/default/files/archivio/allegati/GPP/dm_11_10_2017.pdf
If you would like any further information on the applications of rubber recycled from End-of-Life tyres for the building and construction sector, please visit our dedicated page, “Focus: building” or find out about our technical manuals on the topic:
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