As part of the funding initiative “Resource-Efficient Circular Economy – Urban Mining” launched by the German Federal Ministry for Research, Technology and Space (BMFTR), the research project “RueBe” was initiated in November 2025. The project aims to recover and reintegrate mineral waste from DK0 landfills into sustainable building material cycles. It is coordinated by the Fraunhofer Institute for Building Physics IBP.
The primary focus of the project is the comprehensive utilization of materials deposited in DK0 landfills. These landfills represent significant anthropogenic resource reservoirs, with an estimated volume of over 15 billion tons of excavated soil and construction waste (as of 2022). To ensure material quality, wet-mechanical processing methods, such as “soil washing”, are employed. These methods are designed to remove contaminants, enabling both coarse and fine fractions to be reused as valuable secondary raw materials for alternative binders, such as liquid soils and masonry bricks.
In addition, the project addresses the targeted processing of landfill materials, along with the identification and mitigation of existing regulatory barriers to facilitate material recovery and its subsequent application in construction products.
A further key component of the project involves a comprehensive environmental and economic assessment to evaluate the market viability of the developed solution concepts. This includes the development and evaluation of strategies for the further recycling of the recycled-material-based construction products.
The project consortium covers the entire value chain ranging from raw material extraction and processing to material development and industrial-scale production of construction products. This integrated approach ensures that both the planned activities and the results achieved are consistently aligned with timely, market-ready applications.
The RueBe project thus makes a significant contribution to resource conservation and the advancement of a sustainable circular economy in Germany. The expected outcomes have the potential not only to increase recycling rates for mineral waste but also to open up new business opportunities for landfill operators.
Fraunhofer Institute for Building Physics IBP