From rubble to resource: how Kharkiv is learning to mine its own ruins

As of 1 August 2026, more than 202,900 tonnes had accumulated there – approximately as much material as would be contained in twenty multi-storey buildings.

Just a year ago, Ivanna Nazarenko was not working in waste management. Today, she looks at those stockpiles and sees not only the aftermath of war, but also a source of raw materials.

Ivanna heads the Development Project Management, Communications and International Cooperation Department at the Municipal Enterprise “Municipal Waste Management Company” of the Kharkiv City Council. The approach that changed the way she sees them is called Urban Mining.

The city’s only designated site

According to Kharkiv Mayor Ihor Terekhov, Kharkiv has suffered the greatest level of destruction among Ukraine’s major cities. In July 2026, he reported that around 13,000 properties in the city had been damaged, including approximately 10,000 residential buildings. Around 4,000 buildings, he added, have already been restored. Shelling continues and the volume of debris from destruction grows every month.

The complex operated by Ivanna’s enterprise is the only site in Kharkiv officially designated by the city authorities to receive and process such debris. Everything left behind after strikes is brought here.

“More than 200,000 tonnes is not just a figure. It is an enormous challenge, but one that has also opened up opportunities,” Ivanna says. 

“We started asking ourselves: how can we make sure that this waste does not simply accumulate, but becomes a valuable resource that can contribute to the city’s recovery without harming the environment?”

Seeing a resource where people once saw rubbish

Ivanna began looking for an answer through the UNIDO pilot initiative on urban mining, implemented from July 2025 to July 2026 under the project “Green industrial recovery through municipality-based development in Ukraine.” The initiative covered 50 territorial communities across the Sumy, Chernihiv and Kharkiv oblasts, with one central objective: to change the way debris from destruction is perceived – from rubbish to a resource for recovery.

The approach itself is based on a simple idea: materials already embedded in the urban environment – in buildings, infrastructure and surfaces – can, after proper sorting and processing, return to the economic cycle instead of becoming waste. In this logic, a city is not a landfill, but an urban mine.

“At first, this was an entirely new field for me,” Ivanna recalls. “But the deeper I became involved in the training, the more I learned about international and national experience and saw how these approaches work in other municipalities, the more I understood that this was not simply an interesting concept, but a practical tool for the recovery of Ukrainian cities.”

Heidelberg, Stuttgart, Borodianka

The initiative went beyond webinars. Ivanna went through a selection process and became one of five representatives of territorial communities from the Sumy, Chernihiv and Kharkiv oblasts to take part in a study visit to Germany.

In November 2025, they worked in Heidelberg, Göppingen and Stuttgart. They saw how former military housing areas and industrial zones are transformed into new residential neighbourhoods based on circularity principles. How buildings receive “material passports” describing what they are made of and what can be recovered when they are dismantled and how crushers and sorting lines operate.

What impressed Ivanna most was not any single solution, but the way all the elements formed one chain – from dismantling and sorting to processing and returning materials to construction. Urban Mining stopped being an abstract concept and became a sequence of operations that could be seen first-hand.

In February 2026, Ivanna and her colleagues travelled to Borodianka in the Kyiv Oblast, to see how similar approaches work in Ukrainian conditions – within Ukrainian legislation and budgets and against the backdrop of reconstruction following destruction.

“We met people who had already implemented similar solutions, studied real cases, spoke with experts and built partnerships,” Ivanna says. “Many of these contacts continue today and have already developed into professional cooperation that helps advance urban mining in Kharkiv.”

Nine thousand tonnes

At the site, materials are first sorted, with metal, wood and plastic removed. The mineral fraction is then crushed. Roughly half of the resulting material is crushed concrete, while around 15 per cent is metal.

As of 1 August 2026, the enterprise had processed more than 9,100 tonnes. Another approximately 193,800 tonnes were still awaiting processing. At the current capacity of around 3,780 tonnes per month, processing this volume would require more than four years of continuous operation.

The first secondary materials are already being put to use in access roads and landscaping. The next task is to enable their use in construction.

To move towards that goal, the enterprise approached laboratories at Ukrainian universities and worked with them to test how screenings – the fine fraction remaining after crushing – perform in new construction materials. This was done largely with the resources already available: bare-minimum facilities, the enterprise’s own equipment and a team willing to experiment.

At the same time, Kharkiv has developed a vision for managing not only debris from destruction, but also construction and demolition waste, supported by a roadmap and a clear framework for cooperation among all relevant stakeholders.

What is holding progress back

Despite the first results, scaling up recycling is constrained by issues that the enterprise cannot resolve on its own. Ukraine still lacks technical regulations and standards for secondary raw materials, while certification remains unregulated. In practice, material can be crushed, but officially confirming its suitability for construction remains difficult. Removing material from a damaged property also requires the owner’s consent, while there are currently few incentives for using secondary materials in construction.

The war itself presents another challenge. Air-raid alerts and the risk of repeated shellings make it difficult to sort materials directly at demolition sites. Some of the machinery also has to be regularly redirected to clear rubble after new attacks on Kharkiv – the very rubble that will later arrive at the processing site.

How the idea entered the city’s plans

One of the results of the initiative was an urban mining action plan for Kharkiv, setting out concrete steps for processing and reusing debris from destruction. Five such plans were developed in total for communities across the three regions.

The work did not remain confined to the action plan. In March 2026, urban mining was incorporated into the draft Development Strategy of the Kharkiv City Territorial Community – the document through which the city plans its future. The Strategy is still being prepared and is expected to be adopted in 2027. The topic has also been reflected in the community’s strategic environmental assessment, while the next step is its inclusion in the local waste management plan.

For Ivanna, this is the most significant result: a concept she first encountered only a year ago has become part of the way the city plans its recovery.

Meanwhile, the team is holding discussions with European companies on technologies and potential joint projects.

Looking ahead

Ivanna believes that the potential of the approach extends far beyond dealing with the consequences of the war.

“Urban Mining is not only about debris from destruction. In the future, this approach should also cover unsafe and ageing housing stock. This would help conserve natural resources, reuse materials and build a modern circular economy model that will become an important part of the recovery of our cities after the war.”

This perspective changes the very meaning of reconstruction. It is not simply about replacing what has been destroyed with something new. It is about preserving the value of materials already present in the city, reducing the extraction of primary raw materials and easing pressure on the environment.

“Participating in this project became more than just a new professional experience. It changed the way I see how even the greatest challenges can be turned into opportunities for development when there is a team of like-minded people, a willingness to learn and a determination to implement new solutions.”

At the Kharkiv site, 193,800 tonnes still remain. But they are no longer seen only as the aftermath of destruction – they are materials in which the city is learning to recognize a resource of its own.

Background

The pilot initiative “Urban Mining for Sustainable Recovery: Capacity Building across Sumy, Chernihiv and Kharkiv Regions” ran from July 2025 to July 2026 and covered 50 communities. Five municipal urban mining action plans were developed under the initiative – for Popivka and Hlukhiv in the Sumy Oblast, Pryluky in the Chernihiv Oblast and Merefa and Kharkiv in the Kharkiv Oblast.

Under the project, 34 potential pilot initiatives were identified and developed as green solutions at the municipal level. Seven were selected for implementation, including the urban mining initiative. Together, these seven pilot interventions implemented under the project “Green industrial recovery through municipality-based development in Ukraine,” address a broad range of municipal recovery priorities, including energy-efficient planning, circular economy solutions for industrial waste, urban mining, wastewater treatment, integrated water and energy management, inter-municipal biogas and renewable energy, and sustainable water management.

The project forms part of the UNIDO green industrial recovery programme for Ukraine (2024-2028) and is implemented by the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO), with financial support from the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) and in partnership with the Ministry of Economy and Environment of Ukraine.