A new recycling system of waste gypsum board paper: Application of waste gypsum board paper for soil improvement

We have already developed a new recycling system for high water content mud such as construction sludge by using paper debris (fragments of the newspaper) to increase the recycling rate of the construction sludge. However, recently, the price of old newspaper is increasing. Therefore, development of inexpensive fiber materials are strongly desired in order to reduce the recycling cost. In this study, the applicability of waste gypsum board paper instead of paper debris was experimentally investigated. The waste gypsum board paper was crushed by the hammer mill and crushed paper was used in fiber-cement-stabilized-soil method. It was found through the unconfined compression tests that the failure strength and failure strain of modified soils by using crushed board paper are almost the same as those of modified soils by using paper debris. That is, it was confirmed that the crushed board paper can become a substitute of paper debris.