Earth Cycle - On-site recycling process of extracted soil from the subway work in SEVRAN and its impact on the circular economy

The City of Sevran proposed to foster a new model of town planning development, based on local resources: the project set up an industrial process to reuse the soil that is extracted from the excavation sites of the new subway and other construction sites in Sevran. Indeed, the new subway infrastructure of Great Paris (70 new stations) combined with the development of urban areas generate a very high need for resources and a large volume of waste. Tackling this issue implies to implement in a very short term a new way of building cities at a large scale. The produced materials are used in construction sites in the urban area (3 main elements are to be produced: bricks, panels of clay, wall coating).

The significant innovation lies in creating an industrial process using extracted soil as raw material. The expected results were to avoid dumping it with all the associated costs (use of a large number of trucks, fuel consumption, CO2 emission), to avoid massive dump areas in Paris region, to secure material availability, to promote a low carbon urbanization and reversible buildings. Reducing significantly carbon emission by itself and by the diminution of truck traffic, the project contributed to provide a better living environment for inhabitants, during the 15 or 20 years of planned urban works, and a large number of new jobs. The industrial system proposed was designed in order to be easily duplicated and to adapt to different sites.

During its implementation, the UIA project has capitalised on its experience so that it can be shared with peers. The outputs displayed on this page are the result of this process.