Axiological and Cultural Reinterpretation of Recycled Rubber in the Moral Economy of Waste and the Circularity of Material Value in Concrete

Abstract

The management of industrial waste is part of an axiological challenge that permeates the ontology of material culture, where discarded matter embodies a symbolic boundary between the valuable and the excluded, this study analyzes the incorporation of recycled rubber into concrete as an act of ontological resignification of waste within a moral economy oriented towards the circularity of value. More than a technical substitution, this practice constitutes a reconfiguration of the relationships between matter, use, and meaning. The analysis of its material behavior reveals a transformation in the way value is inscribed in the constructive substance, articulating structural performance and environmental projection within the same network of meaning, the reintegration of waste into the concrete matrix thus expresses a mutation in the symbolic economy of construction, where discarded matter acquires agency within the production process. The circularity of material value emerges as a cultural horizon that redefines the status of waste and reorganizes the traditional hierarchy between resource and refuse. In this context, the constructive culture is configured as a space of mediation between technique and ethics, where sustainability operates as a constitutive principle of a new civilizational understanding of matter.