Diamonds Are Forever. But What About Soil?

Excavated soil can cause issues with costs: It can either need to be moved away from the construction site or be used again to help something grow. With MB Crusher’s shaft screener, topsoil gets a new lease on life, right where it is needed.

Soil has a curious characteristic: it is extremely valuable when it’s needed but it becomes a problem when it takes up precious space, not to mention the costs for trucks, fuel and other transportation costs along with material that has to be purchased and soil that has to be managed.
Topsoil is a valuable resource. It contains organic matter, minerals and life, so when a project transforms an urban space into a park, garden, pedestrian area or green space, that soil can return exactly where it is needed: to help something grow.

More greenery, more soil to put to use

Cities are changing: New parks, gardens, pedestrian areas, urban forestry and projects are designed to make spaces more permeable and they are increasingly becoming a part of urban regeneration projects.
Europe is moving in the same direction.
The EU Nature Restoration Regulation sets targets for urban ecosystems: by 2030, Member States must ensure there is no net loss in the total area of urban green space and tree canopy cover, while from 2031 there must be a trend towards an increase.
For those working on a construction site, the concept is very concrete: more green areas mean more soil to move, prepare and capitalize on.
And so the question arises: why remove a resource from the site, only to buy the same thing and move it back to where it is needed?

Alternative Version of the Paragraph for Non-Eu Countries:

More greenery, more soil to put to use
Cities are changing. Parks, pedestrian areas, urban green spaces and dense, water-tight surface  removal projects are becoming an increasingly important part of urban regeneration layouts.

And as green spaces grow, so does the work involving soil. It is excavated, moved and prepared, while new areas are created for lawns, trees and planting.

The point is simple: that soil is already there. It can become a resource for the project, rather than leaving the site to make way for new material that has to be purchased and transported.

In layman’s terms more green space also means more soil to move, prepare and put to use.

So basically: why take a resource away, only to buy the very same resource and ship it back to the same location?

Topsoil is created where it is needed

The MB Crusher MB-HDS shaft screener allows material to be screened directly on the carrier machine on the site. Excavated soil, stones, roots and debris enter the attachment. The shafts screen the material and allow a fraction of soil to be obtained, ready for the next stage of work. The resulting material can become topsoil for a green area, material for seeding, a base for planting or material for backfilling an excavation.

But this job does not end with your run of the mill screening.

The MB-HDS range from MB Crusher uses different types of shafts, selected according to the material and the desired result. The machine can therefore support different operations: from soil screening to substrate preparation and mixing with compost or sand.

When I grow up, I want to be a gardener

Soil knows what to do when it finds the right place. It just needs a helping hand.

Edil 2T S.n.c. di Todeschini Daniel & C. in Italy knows this well. To landscape gardens, the company uses an MB-HDS207 shaft screener with an RQ8 screening kit. The soil arrives, passes through the shafts and becomes useful again directly on the site. Fewer journeys, less material to manage and more readily available material to become part of the new project.

The customer’s comment sums up the result nicely: it works “like a real gardener”.

Even more interesting is the case of a company in Lviv, Ukraine, which specializes in gardening and landscaping. Here, the MB-HDS207 shaft screener works on a mini excavator. A screening bucket was previously used, but with MB Crusher’s attachment, the work is now carried out around five times faster.

And that soil has plenty to do. Once screened, it becomes soil for lawns and flowers, supports new gardening layouts, is used in landscaping projects and also serves to backfill and cover pipes for water supply and irrigation systems.

Ultimately, that is the beauty of soil: it changes place, shape and purpose. But its value remains.

When soil becomes a business too.

There are also those who have looked at the issue from another perspective.

In Lithuania, a company chose an MB-HDS220 star screener for its telescopic handler and turned the screening of sand, soil, compost and fertiliser into a genuine business venture.
The materials are processed, screened and then packaged for sale to customers.

Soil can therefore become a raw material, a product and an opportunity.

This is also the essence of applying the circular economy to construction: making use of what is already there, reducing material management with transportation costs, and creating new material directly where it is needed.

A principle that also aligns with the environmental objectives of public construction projects. In Italy, for example, the local CAM requirements for green spaces provide for the preservation of the topsoil layer and its subsequent reuse in landscaping tasks.

In short, diamonds are forever, but soil, on the other hand, knows how to reinvent itself. And perhaps the real value does not simply lie in having available soil, but in knowing how to turn it into a new resource.