Quarry dumps: Chance to become new ore deposit (Italian state of the art).

Quarry Waste (QW) represents an enormous loss of resources and causes economic and environmental cost increase (waste management and dumping). A significant part of QW is valuable, but often lost because of not efficient recovery practices. On the other hand, Raw Materials (RM), whose availability is increasingly under pressure, are essential for the EU economy. A great deal of waste can be regained as valuable RM by the enhancing of QW recovery processes to obtain Secondary Raw Materials (SRM: Industrial Minerals, Aggregates, etc..). In Italy large amounts of QW have been and are still dumped. Such materials can represent a great alternative resources for SRM exploitation. Several dimension stones are interested by QW exploitation, in particular: Carrara marble, Lake Granites, Trentino porphyry, Piedmont gneisses, Sardinia granites, etc… The paper shows the state of the art of QW exploitation in Italy; highlighting best practices and efficient recovery processes (technologies and techniques).