« What’s to be done with the soil excavated from construction sites? », an article by Sibylle Vincendon in Libération

20 août 2020

Artificial hills on the ECT site at Moissy-Cramayel

A park created entirely with re-used soil will soon be officially opened by the mayor of Moissy-Cramayel in the département of Seine-et-Marne.

What’s to be done with soil excavated from construction sites?

A few weeks from now, the Mayor of Moissy-Cramayel (Seine-et-Marne) will officially open a park created entirely thanks to re-used soil. In twenty years or more, as the deposits are exhausted, the galleries of gypsum mines operated in the Île-de-France region by Placo will be backfilled with the same soil. Using the spoil that all the construction sites are excavating to fill other sites seems to make sense. It’s not the rule. The days are long gone when the civil engineers of Haussmann’s Paris « had a culture of excavate-and-backfill », in the words of the architect Antoine Grumbach. The soil from the excavation of the Paris Métro was used to make the parks. Leader in the collection and processing of these soils, ECT does this kind of recycling when it’s possible. The least visible but most remarkable technique is that of using soil to backfill the galleries of gypsum mines when they’ve been emptied. The Île-de-France has a very good basin of these deposits, from which Placo, a division of Saint-Gobain, extracts the gypsum plaster used to make the famous drywall panels for the construction industry. Since 2000, the quarry companies have been required to backfill where they have excavated, to avoid the collapse of the galleries.] Read the entire article
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