Concrete is the most used building material in the world. Its success lies in its versatility and availability, as it is essentially a local material. At present, however, the existence of concrete will be achieved first by the challenge of its arrival, which is its sustainability for the next generations, in connection with the growing population. With the passage of time, there is an increasing deficit of non-renewable resources. It is because of this that most informed people agree with the transition from a linear to a circular economy. Of course, concrete cannot keep up with this significant paradigm shift. What are the most important data to assess the potential for concrete recycling? In Europe, 196 Mt of recycled concrete aggregate (RCA) was produced in 2015, mainly from construction waste from demolitions. Of this amount, approximately 40% was reused in monolithic or precast reinforced concrete. Therefore, according to such simple calculations, there would be a possibility to replace at least 20% of the used natural aggregate with recycled aggregate in the entire production of concrete load-bearing structures. Of course, if we consider concrete load-bearing structures made from internal materials originating from demolitions (including natural or granular materials from subsoil roads), this percentage will increase even more. Some European countries have been using this method of producing recycled concrete for several years. For example, in England, the rate of use of recycled concrete aggregate was already in 2008, about 5% of the total RA production. However, this material is not yet fully used for the design of the load-bearing structures of buildings. So, we can conclude that the concrete industry could recycle significantly, but currently it still does not do so. In general, it can be summarized that this is due to the fact that there is no consensus on whether the use of recycled aggregate results in an increase or decrease in the mechanical properties of concrete, given the diversity of results in each available experiment. The use of recycled concrete in load-bearing structures is therefore a very current topic and its application continues to be of interest to the field of development and research. This paper will deal with the dispersion of the mechanical characteristics of recycled concrete depending on the type of recycled aggregate and the size of the water/cement ratio.

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