Construction and demolition waste - Major challenges ahead!

摘要

Construction and demolition wastes (CDWs) are not normally a concern of citizens who directly generate and deal with municipal solid waste (MSW) every day. However, waste from buildings and infrastructure poses both huge management challenges and opportunities to advance a society's sustainable waste and resource management. This is due to (1) the vast quantity of waste produced in construction and demolition (C&D) activities and (2) the long periods products remain in the anthropogenic stock that leads to limitations when old products should be recycled due to the fact that hazardous components (even though these have been long banned) are included in those wastes. This is due to the adverse impact these hazardous components can have on human health and the environment once the built objects are dismantled and the respective components are to be recycled or disposed of. Also, quantities and types of C&D wastes are difficult to predict due to the variety of materials used for construction over the decades and the influence of economic development, as well as, for example, war events, earthquakes and tsunamis. Another CDW management challenge in at least some regions of the globe is the scarcity of sand and gravel resources due to rapid global urbanization that creates the predicted need for construction of an average of 13,000 new buildings every day through to 2050 (Autodesk, 2019).