Recycling and Disposal
In most developed countries, asbestos is typically disposed of as hazardous waste in landfill sites.
The demolition of buildings containing large amounts of asbestos based materials pose particular problems for builders and property developers - such buildings often have to be deconstructed piece by piece, or the asbestos has to be painstakingly removed before the structure can be razed by mechanical or explosive means. One such example is the Red Road high-rise housing development in Glasgow, Scotland which used huge amounts of asbestos cement board for wall panelling - here British health and safety regulations stipulate that asbestos material has to be removed to a landfill site via an approved route at certain times of the day in specially adapted vehicles.
Asbestos can be recycled by transforming it into harmless silicate glass. A process of thermal decomposition at 1000–1250 °C produces a mixture of non-hazardous silicate phases, and at temperatures above 1250 °C it produces silicate glass. Microwave thermal treatment can be used in an industrial manufacturing process to transform asbestos and asbestos-containing waste into porcelain stoneware tiles, porous single-fired wall tiles, and ceramic bricks.
Read more about this topic: Asbestos
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