A new sidewalk tile with a minimum 50% CO2 reduction compared to 2021 is literally on the street
> Partner: ECC Næstved
> Client: Næstved Municipality.
About the project
IBF, in collaboration with the Danish company ECC (Engineering Consulting Corporation), has developed a concrete tile with a reduced CO2 footprint of at least 50% compared to 2021 emissions. The tile also complies with the current legislation for traditional cement-based concrete tiles.
Næstved Municipality inaugurated the first stretch of the CO2-reduced sidewalk tiles on December 8, 2023. A tile that has also been developed with support from the Ministry of Environment and is produced at IBF’s existing production facility with minimal modifications.
How is CO2 reduction achieved in concrete tiles?
In the new IBF Eco2® Relow tile, the conventional cement is replaced with a CO2-reduced binder called Relow. The binder is a specially developed hybrid geopolymer. It consists partly of inorganic materials found in large quantities in Danish nature, combined with circular residual materials from Danish industry. All this helps to reduce the pressure on virgin materials.
The new tile has already been laid
In December 2023, 2,000 Relow tiles were installed on Svendborgvej in Næstved. With a total weight of 162 tons distributed over 800 meters of sidewalk, Næstved Municipality achieved a CO2 savings of approximately 10 tons of CO2 equivalent compared to conventional concrete tiles.
The Relow tile looks exactly like the conventional concrete tile that citizens are already familiar with.
> Advantages of the IBF Eco2® Relow tile
The tile becomes the latest addition to IBF’s Eco2® family
IBF established in 2022 a new joint brand for concrete products with a minimum of 50% CO2 reduction compared to 2021 emissions. The first product in the portfolio was a sewer pipe produced entirely without the use of cement. Aarhus Vand was the first to use the new CO2-reduced sewer pipe and laid a 600-meter section in the spring of 2022 as part of a sewer separation project.
In spring 2023, another product was introduced, namely a SF-Coloc® paving stone with a minimum of 50% CO2 reduction, which was first used by the Port of Aalborg Industrial Harbor in connection with a 15,000 sqm expansion of the harbor's industrial area. Both of these concrete products were based on the binder Geoprime®, which is developed by IBF's Finnish partner Betolar. This new sidewalk tile is instead based on the binder Relow, which is developed by the Danish ECC. IBF will continue to offer both solutions for the production of IBF Eco2® products.