Background Glass-based cellular insulation materials were introduced in USA in the 1930s and patented in the 1950s. The glass foams were produced from primary materials and used for creating panels for the thermal insulation of civil buildings. However, this technology was soon abandoned for polymeric materials, which were seen to be less expensive, more efficient and easier to use. Glass recycling has become quite common and the European public is familiar with the recycling of glass jars and bottles. Nevertheless, a significant amount of ‘special’ glass waste is produced that cannot be recycled by the glass container industry or the ceramic industry because of its particular chemical compositions. This glass mostly comes from a range of sources from typical household waste to consumables. In the North of Italy alone, it amounts to some 80 000 tonnes per year. This special glass is currently landfilled and the amount of waste is only expected to increase in the coming years. Objectives The NOVEDI project aimed to demonstrate the feasibility of using waste ‘special’ glass to make insulation material and thus, reduce the amount of this glass sent to landfill to zero. The glass was to come from sources other than cities’ glass collection systems. These sources included television screens, screens from the automobile industry, glass from the cutting and polishing industry, photovoltaic panels, textile glass fibres, lamps, solar panels, artistic glass and mosaics. The project would implement new technologies to produce glass-based insulating materials using glass from these sources; it aimed to demonstrate the economic viability of insulation materials with high performance in thermal insulation and mechanical strength, and which are also fireproof and environmentally friendly. Subsequent objectives were to construct a civic building made of light concrete based on glass foam, in order to demonstrate the material’s potential and to successfully introduce the glass-based insulation panels from ‘unrecyclable’ glass waste onto the market. The final aim of the project was to raise awareness and understanding within the construction sector and among citizens about the possibilities of using eco-compatible construction materials, such as those derived from recycled glass. Results The NOVEDI project showed how glass rejects not included in cities’ separate waste collection but usually landfilled, can be reused as foam glass, a porous gravel with remarkable characteristics of thermal insulation usable in the building sector as an inert in concrete. It demonstrated a series of glass-based cellular insulation materials that remove the need for the land-filling of special glass rejects and quarry of primary resources. In particular, it recycled rejects from soda lime glass , front monitor glass , fibre glass and lamp and artistic glass : these were transformed into two certified products: glass foam suitable for lightweight structural concrete (density: 1800 kg/m3) for the construction of roofs and floors and glass foam suitable for super lightweight insulating concrete for walls (density: 1000 kg/m3). The results showed the economic viability of using these glass foams with high performance in thermal insulation, mechanical strength and lightness, fireproof, moisture insulation and technical reversibility: the economic assessments showed that a production plant about four times the size of the pilot plant would be able to obtain a competitive sales price in the insulation/building materials sector. The project used around 150 tonnes of special glass rejects, producing about 750 m3 of glass-foam. Around 80 tonnes of recycled glass (producing 400 m3 of glass foam) was used for the demonstrative building construction, while the remainder was used for trials. This building, consisting of 80% recycled materials, was still under construction at the end of the project. It was expected to use 80 000 kg of glass rejects composed of 85% soda lime glass rejects, 5% front monitor glass rejects, 5% fibre glass rejects and 5% of a mixture of lamp and artistic glass rejects. Its energy consumption will be 15 kWh/m2/year, which will be fully supplied by a photovoltaic installation. Finally, the project disseminated results to the local population and those in the construction sector in Northern Italy, raising awareness on energy efficient and eco-compatible building materials recovered from waste. The project created an energy information desk with an online portal (www.novedi.it) and informed the construction sector operators about the involvement of their representative bodies. From a social-economic perspective, the pilot plant for the production of glass foam had to employ 2 full-time workers and 3 part-time workers who cover the night and weekend shifts. The implementation of an industrial plant, four times as big as the present plant, would not lead to a linear multiplication of necessary labour force; however an additional 2-3 persons would be needed. As soon as the market will demand a plant with a higher capacity (200.000 m3), at least other 2 workers would have to be hired in Sasil. In May 2016, the LIFE external monitoring team carried out an ex-post follow-up visit to the project. This noted how it had helped the glass recycling industry recover rejects and "special" glass waste that currently ends up in landfill (in line with the targets set by the Waste Framework Directive and the Circular Economy Action Plan), whilst producing the ulterior benefit of enhancing the energy efficiency of buildings thanks to the production of new insulating building materials. The specific case of glass recycling is particularly important in Italy, which is one of the Member States with the most intensive glass recycling industries (with 31 glass packaging production plants and 20 recycling plants) and, although there are significant differences in recovery and recycling rates among macro areas, Italy has already reached the targets set by the Waste Framework Directive (60% by 2008) and is on the right track to reach those set by the Circular Economy Strategy (75% of recycled glass by 2025, with 70.3% registered in 2014). According to the project, the amounts of glass foam produced decreased from 2010 to 2015. Though the process was successfully upscaled to an industrial level, revenues from its use were extremely low. The furnace used to produce the foam glass, which ideally should have been turned on for 24 hours a day with limited interruptions, has actually been activated for much less time. Therefore, below-capacity production has resulted in high operation costs and low competitiveness. The project created one job, but the non-continuous use of the plant means this is not full-time (on average 50 days a year). A factor has been a major downturn in the Italian construction industry, which has reduced demand for building materials, while the product was also beset with marketing problems. To overcome these problems SASIL now intends to commercialise the product under a different brand-name in Italy and elsewhere. Now that they can sell the product directly, SASIL hopes to expand the market and increase the plant's production capacity from 16 000 m3/year up to 20 000 m3/year. Executives of the holding group SASIL: Gruppo Minerali Industriali explained that they are in the process of defining the best marketing strategy for the product, under its new brand-name “SAVELPOR50”. The innovative glass milling equipment to set up this technology was purchased within the NOVEDI project budget. It proved to be very successful and has already been replicated in several different contexts: in a large-scale plant in Switzerland, a small-scale plant in the Czech Republic, and in a medium-scale plant in Sweden. Two more plants will soon be equipped with this technology in Belgium and Canada. Moreover, industrial plants in Germany and Austria have expressed interest. They are establishing a network of promoters and salespersons in Italy. Contacts have been established directly with potential clients, for instance, in South Tirol through the "green building" network CasaClima, with two clients committing to order a total of some 9 000 m3/year (above the average consumption rate of this material in Italy). Contacts have also been established with a company in Austria that has expressed interest in selling the NOVEDI product in northern Europe, where the market for glass foam as a construction material is generally higher than in Italy. Further information on the project can be found in the project's layman report (see "Read more" section).