Environmental Impact and Cost Assessment for Reusing Waste during End-of-Life Activities on Building Projects
Publication: Journal of Construction Engineering and Management
Volume 149, Issue 10
Abstract
The construction industry contributes significantly to global environmental loads with massive amounts of construction and demolition waste (CDW) ending up in landfills. To address the need for efficient CDW management, this research proposes a new decision support framework for managing construction waste generated during end-of-life activities for building projects. The framework monetizes potential environmental savings from different recovery options (e.g., reuse, recycle, and so on) and uses multiobjective optimization to determine the optimal quantity of material to undergo each material recovery scenario. The framework uses parametric weights to consider stakeholders’ preferences and their appreciation of environmental benefits compared with costs. A case study of a renovation project in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, is used to demonstrate how the proposed framework can divert concrete and glass waste from the landfill. For this particular project, savings of 200 GJ of embodied energy, of water, and over 12 t of greenhouse gases can be realized from optimal recovery planning using the proposed framework. This study concludes that decision support systems should be used well in advance of end-of-life activities to evaluate trade-offs for recovery planning activities effectively.
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Data Availability Statement
All data, models, and code generated or used during the study appear in the published article.
Acknowledgments
The work described in this paper was funded by the Ministry of Higher Education of Egypt. The authors would like to thank Professors C. Haas and S. Shahi (University of Waterloo) for their invaluable guidance when structuring the first draft of this paper.
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Journal of Construction Engineering and Management
Volume 149 • Issue 10 • October 2023
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© 2023 American Society of Civil Engineers.
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Received: Jul 17, 2022
Accepted: May 31, 2023
Published online: Jul 31, 2023
Published in print: Oct 1, 2023
Discussion open until: Dec 31, 2023
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