Waste Management 31 (2011) 1252–1260

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Waste Management

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A framework for understanding waste management studies in construction

Weisheng Lu a, Hongping Yuan b,⇑a Department of Real Estate and Construction, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, Chinab Department of Building and Real Estate, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hung Hom, Kowloon, Hong Kong, China

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history:Received 18 June 2010Accepted 19 January 2011Available online 16 February 2011

0956-053X/$ - see front matter � 2011 Elsevier Ltd.doi:10.1016/j.wasman.2011.01.018

⇑ Corresponding author. Tel.: +852 27664306; fax:E-mail addresses: wilsonlu@hku.hk (W. Lu), hp.yua

During the past decades, construction and demolition (C&D) waste issues have received increasing atten-tion from both practitioners and researchers around the world. A plethora of research relating to C&Dwaste management (WM) has been published in scholarly journals. However, a comprehensive under-standing of the C&D WM research is somehow absent in spite of its proliferation. The aim of this paperis to develop a framework that helps readers understand the C&D WM research as archived in selectedjournals. Papers under the topic of C&D WM are retrieved based on a set of rigorous procedures. Theinformation of these papers is then analyzed with the assistance of the Qualitative Social Research(QSR) software package NVivo. A framework for understanding C&D WM research is created based onthe analytic results. By following the framework, a bibliometric analysis of research in C&D WM is pre-sented, followed by an in-depth literature analysis. It is found that C&D generation, reduction, and recy-cling are the three major topics in the discipline of C&D WM. Future research is recommended to (a)investigate C&D waste issues in wider scopes including design, maintenance and demolition, (b) developa unified measurement for waste generation so that WM performance can be compared across variouseconomies, and (c) enhance effectiveness of WM approaches (e.g. waste charging scheme) based onnew WM concepts (e.g. Extended Producer Responsibility). In addition to the above research findings,the approach for producing the research framework can be useful references for other studies whichattempt to understand the research of a given discipline.

� 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction

While acknowledging its significant contribution to the devel-opment of the whole society, the construction industry has alsobeen perceived as a major contributor to environment degradation(Bossink and Brouwers, 1996; Poon et al., 2004a). Its negative im-pacts include, inter alia, land depletion and deterioration, energyconsumption, solid waste generation, dust and gas emission, noisepollution, and consumption of non-renewable natural resources(Ofori, 1992; Sjostrom and Bakens, 1999; Shen et al., 2007). Sincethe early 1980s, with the increasing recognition of sustainabledevelopment as a new value (WCED, 1987), solid waste in the con-struction sector (generally termed as ‘‘construction and demolition(C&D) waste’’) has received widespread attention around the globe.As a result, a plethora of research, investigating a wide array ofC&D waste management (WM) topics, has been published in vari-ous scholarly journals.

Papers published in scholarly journals often reflect changes inthe interests and concerns of the discipline as contributed by theirauthor constituencies. To explore the changes is of particularimportance as it enables evaluating the existing research and

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+852 27645131.n@polyu.edu.hk (H. Yuan).

informing future research directions. Its importance is well evi-denced by works of this kind published every now and then (e.g.Betts and Lansley, 1993; Abudayyeh et al., 2004; Beigl et al.,2008). It is, however, an enigma why a critical analysis of C&DWM research is absent in spite of the many publications and theirwide range of coverage. The aim of this study is, therefore, to ana-lyze the state-of-the-art of C&D WM as a research discipline. This ismainly achieved through producing a framework. Based on theproposed framework, a bibliometric analysis was carried out, fol-lowed by an in-depth literature analysis of the research discipline.Arguably, a literature review is concerning existing research gapsof a specific research area, in particular, implications for further re-search, while a bibliometric analysis usually focuses on demo-graphics of a research area ‘‘as-is’’ in one journal or more. Thetwo approaches are not necessarily distinct from each other inthe delineation of a research area.

In this paper, the framework for understanding C&D WM re-search is developed by following three rigorously devised proce-dures: (1) brainstorming session; (2) retrieving papers; and (3)analyzing paper contents with the assistance of NVivo� softwarepackage. Finally, the framework produced by Nvivo� is convertedinto a novel framework by placing it in the particular context ofconstruction management so that the C&D WM research can bebetter understood. It is anticipated that by using the framework

Fig. 1. Research boundary for C&D WM publications.

W. Lu, H. Yuan / Waste Management 31 (2011) 1252–1260 1253

readers can quickly grasp a general picture of the C&D WM re-search published in selected journals. Researchers might be in abetter position to reveal research gaps worthy of attention andthus, to inspire new research directions for the future. Further-more, the approach proposed for producing the framework in thisstudy could be a useful reference to future studies with similarintention.

Table 1

2. Research methods

2.1. Brainstorming session

It is important from the outset to define a boundary for C&DWM research so that articles related to this discipline would notbe omitted for further analyses. In this study, the boundary isfenced by a group of main topics of C&D WM; if a paper relatesto any of the topics, it will be included for analysis. A brainstorm-ing session is organized to derive the boundary. The brainstormingsession was conducted in April, 2009 and lasted about 40 min. Thebrainstorming group consisted of five researchers, each with 2 to7 years’ research experience on C&D WM. All attendees were in-formed of objective of the brainstorming at the onset of the sessionfor enhancing its efficiency. All the main ideas emerging during thebrainstorming were merged onto a large idea map. By consolidat-ing them a set of main topics was obtained to form the boundary ofC&D WM research, which is shown in Fig. 1.

Number of papers in target journals regarding C&D WM.

Journal title No. of papers

Resources, Conservation and Recycling 35Waste Management 28Waste Management and Research 17Construction Management and Economics 12Journal of Construction Engineering and Management ASCE 10Building and Environment 8Engineering, Construction and Architectural Management 5Automation in Construction 4Journal of Industrial Ecology 4Construction Innovation 3Management of Environmental Quality: An International Journal 3Building Research & Information 2Others 16

2.2. Retrieving papers

The work commenced with the identification of internationallyrenowned scholarly journals that have published works on C&DWM. Based on the knowledge of the authors, three journals includ-ing Waste Management (WM), Waste Management & Research(WM&R), and Resources, Conservation and Recycling, were selectedat the first stage. The three journals particularly focus on WMand publish works on C&D WM occasionally. Bearing in mind theboundary developed in the above section, articles were identifiedby manually searching journals issue-by-issue. This effort resultedin 80 papers retrieved published during 1996 and 2010.

Afterward, the keywords drawn from the identified 80 paperswere ranked according to their frequencies of occurrence (FoC).Those most frequently appeared keywords were adopted as thekeywords for scanning titles, keywords, and abstracts of the arti-cles published in other scholarly journals. Databases used for scan-ning included ABI, Ei CompendexWeb, ISI Web of Knowledge,Academic Search Premier and ScienceDirect accessing via a univer-sity library. This task was specially enhanced by an online Con-struction Management Abstracts developed by the Association ofResearchers in Construction Management (ARCOM). The websitearchives the full titles, authors, abstracts and keywords of articlesfrom several well-recognized construction management relatedjournals which also publish C&D WM papers. Then a brief reviewof the titles and abstracts of papers was conducted to filter outthose less related to C&D WM. Again, the boundary developed pre-viously served as a filter and 51 extra papers were identified as aresult.

In order to further ensure comprehensiveness, all references ofthe 131 papers identified above were manually scanned to checkwhether some papers are highly related to C&D WM but have beenneglected by the 131-paper list. Through this cross-referring exam-ination, 16 additional papers were found. Finally, a total of 147papers were identified. Table 1 shows the number of identified pa-pers published in these journals.

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2.3. Analyzing contents using NVivo�

The task onward is to analyze the contents of the 147 articles.Given the relatively large number, it seems very difficult to con-duct the analysis manually but to engage computerized tools.Alexa and Zuell (1999) reviewed various software programs forcontent analysis in terms of their functions, features, and limita-tions. It is noted that NVivo� provides a good support for importingarticles in Acrobat PDF format. Its ‘‘Code’’ and ‘‘Model’’ functionsenable users to classify, sort and arrange thousands of pieces ofinformation and examine complex relationships in the informa-tion. NVivo software package was adopted in the analysis.

All articles imported into NVivo in this research are called‘‘Sources’’. The sources were analyzed by using the ‘‘Node’’ functionin NVivo. A node is a collection of references regarding a specifictheme. The references were gathered when reading through thesources, and references about the same theme were categorizedinto the corresponding node. This process is called ‘‘coding’’. Forexample, when reading the content reporting the amount of an-nual C&D waste generation in a country, we could create a two-level node structure where the first level is ‘‘Generation’’, and thesecond level is ‘‘Amount’’. Then we could select the content andcode it under the ‘‘Amount’’ node. All the nodes were created whenperforming the coding manually. The research boundary served asa useful reference when wording the name of nodes. Following thisapproach, all sources can be coded paragraph-by-paragraph. It

Fig. 2. A tentative framework

should be noted that during the coding process, instead of the NVi-vo, human brains have to determine affiliations of all nodes accord-ing to the characteristics of source contents. Preliminary codesmight be iteratively modified and refined throughout the entirecoding process.

After finishing coding all the sources, the relationship betweenthe key nodes (referring to the two-level nodes in this research)could be constructed by using the ‘‘Model’’ function of NVivo. Asshown in Fig. 2, a tentative framework is generated based on theanalysis of the above 147 articles.

In this framework, various shapes are used for representing dif-ferent meanings. The diamond represents the boundary of the re-search, which is C&D WM; the hexagon means the strategies forC&D WM, which refers to waste reduction, reuse, recycling, anddisposal; the ellipses, which comprise the majority of the frame-work, represent the nodes created in the coding process. A lineor an arrow between any two figures indicates their inter-relationship. Particularly, a line indicates a kind of associationexists between the two items connected, while an arrow indicatesone item is affected by another. For instance, the line between‘‘waste amount’’ and ‘‘waste generation’’ only shows that wasteamount is a reflection of waste generation, but no cause-and-effectrelationship exits between them. Furthermore, each number in theframework shows the total number of papers focusing on a specificsub-topic. For example, there are three sub-topics under the topic‘‘Waste disposal’’, namely, ‘‘Effectiveness of disposal legislations’’,

developed using NVivo.

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‘‘Landfill charge’’ and ‘‘Landfill location’’, with numbers of 2, 2, and1, respectively. This means that among the 147 papers, 2 particu-larly focus on the effectiveness of the disposal legislation, 2 mainlytalk about the landfill charge issue, and 1 reports the selection oflandfill location.

3. A framework for understanding waste management studiesin construction

Fig. 3 is an illustration of the framework created from the ten-tative one developed previously using NVivo. When creating theframework, much deliberation has been given to arranging it inthe broader context of construction management, an umbrella un-der which the discipline of C&D WM was established. As can beseen in Fig. 3, there are four major components in this framework:(a) a C&D WM Hierarchy indicating generic waste managementstrategies according to their priority; (b) a Project Lifecycle indicat-ing the stages that waste management can be conducted; (c) aMaterial Lifecycle helping to trace and analyze material waste;and (d) a C&D WM Approach Spectrum indicating approachesranging from ‘‘hard’’ technologies to ‘‘soft’’ economical/managerialinstruments for addressing C&D waste issues. Component (a) wasdeveloped based on the fist-level nodes in Fig. 2, including ‘‘wastegeneration’’, ‘‘waste reduction’’, ‘‘waste reuse’’, ‘‘waste recycling’’,and ‘‘waste disposal’’. Component (d) was formed by synthesizingall second-level nodes in Fig. 2. Components (b) and (c) were devel-oped according to component (a)’s corresponding relationshipswith construction project lifecycle and material lifecycle.

In using this framework, one can switch the pointers to differ-ent angles to position an existing study. For example, researchon waste concrete recycling technology can be simultaneouslypositioned as ‘‘recycle’’ in the C&D WM Hierarchy, ‘‘demolition’’in the Project Lifecycle, ‘‘recycle’’ in the Material Lifecycle, and‘‘’hard’ technology’’ in the C&D WM Approach Spectrum. Thus,this framework helps readers to quickly grasp a general pictureof the C&D WM research as published. In addition, using theframework as a guideline, an in-depth analysis of previous re-search on C&D WM can be clearly conducted in the next section.To achieve a comprehensive understanding of the state-of-the-art of C&D WM research, one should refer to the framework inconjunction with the in-depth analysis unfolded in followingsection.

Fig. 3. A C&D waste man

4. Analysis and discussions

4.1. A bibliometric analysis of the C&D WM research

Through utilizing the framework developed above, all retrievedC&D WM studies can be positioned properly in different compo-nents, and thus the overview of C&D WM research over thesurveyed period from 1996 and 2010 can be understood. Theframework shows that all topics in the component of C&D WMhierarchy have attracted attention from researchers. However, sig-nificant research efforts have been devoted to C&D waste reduction(62, 42.2%), generation (35, 23.8%), and recycling (35, 23.8%), whilelittle attention has gone to C&D waste disposal (9, 6.1%) and reuse(6, 4.1%). C&D waste reduction is the most investigated topicreflecting that C&D waste reduction is widely recognized as thefirst priority among all strategies for C&D waste minimization(Peng et al., 1997).

By projecting the papers onto a construction project lifecycle, itcan be found that they fall into four major stages including design(10, 6.8%), construction (115, 78.2%), maintenance (4, 2.7%), anddemolition (60, 41%). It should be noted that the summation ofthe four percentages surpass 100% because some papers were in-volved in more than one project stage. Apparently, a significantnumber of papers were concentrated on construction and demoli-tion stages. This is echoed with the concept of C&D waste, whichuses construction and demolition to represent inclusively wastefrom all construction activities. Statistics, however, show that theproportion of C&D waste generated in project maintenance, reno-vation, and demolition is as large as 92% in the total C&D wastegeneration in the US (Kibert, 2000). Some researchers stated thatproblems with respect to project design contribute greatly towaste generation, although indirectly (Ekanayake and Ofori,2004; Osmani et al., 2008). Therefore, it is suggested to pay moreattentions to C&D waste issues at the design, maintenance, anddemolition stages in the future if aiming to enhance the effective-ness of C&D WM.

Similarly, by projecting the papers onto a waste material lifecy-cle, it is found that existing studies mainly focus on issues relatedto material use (72, 49%), demolition (18, 12.2%), recycling (48,32.7%), and disposal (9, 6.1%). The production and delivery ofconstruction materials, consumed a significant proportion ofembodied energy though, are largely out of the attention of exist-ing research interests. According to USEPA (1999), very little

agement framework.

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information is available to enable contractors to make informedchoices considering the most environmentally friendly materialsto be used. In this regard, it is proposed that material vendors shouldbear a significant degree of responsibility for the environmental im-pacts of their products throughout the product lifecycle, includingthe use and disposal of their products. This is resonated with aphilosophy of Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) which meansthat subcontractors or material vendors should be responsible forthe waste generated from their supplies. Research needs to beextended to the upper nodes of the material lifecycle – material pro-duction and delivery – while exploring how the material supplierscan take appropriate share of responsibility in the future.

The research on C&D WM representing in the 147 articles canbe understood by putting them into a ‘‘C&D WM Spectrum’’ rang-ing from ‘‘hard’’ technologies through to ‘‘soft’’ WM measures. Theresearch (26.5%) is about ‘‘hard’’ technologies, such as, environ-mental friendly building technologies or environmental engineer-ing. For example, low waste technologies (e.g. prefabricationinstead of in situ; and use of steel formwork and falsework insteadof timber ones) are introduced to reduce the C&D waste genera-tion. When waste is inevitably generated, new technologies aredeveloped to reuse and recycle it if possible, such as the use ofrecycled aggregates for different concrete applications (Poon andChan, 2007). Environmental engineering is developed to deal withthe extensive amounts of air, water, and soil pollution due to pro-duction of CO2 and methane from anaerobic degradation of C&Dwaste disposed of at landfills. At the other end of this spectrumis the ‘‘soft’’ economical or managerial measures. The majority ofthe C&D WM research adopted ‘‘soft’’ economical/managerialinstruments (97, 66%) which appreciate that C&D WM is also a so-cial issue. These studies mainly adopt research methodologies suchas questionnaire survey, interview, descriptive analysis based onstatistical results and various modeling techniques (e.g. Yuanet al., 2010). Other research is falling between the two extremesby examining both technical and managerial aspects of C&D WM.For example, Jaillon and Poon (2008) examined the technical, man-agerial, and marketing aspects of prefabrication technology inHong Kong. The ‘‘hard’’ technologies and ‘‘soft’’ economical/mana-gerial instruments can be mutually enhanced to deal with C&Dwaste more effectively.

Furthermore, it is found in the literature that there is an imbal-anced research output between developed and developing econo-mies. Table 2 tabulates results of classifying identified papers inline with the background on which each of the papers is based.Apparently, the majority of the 147 papers are about developedcountries/regions while only a small number of papers are aboutemerging countries. The reasons are many, i.e., incapable statisticssystem in developing countries, relatively less input for R&D inC&D WM. This resonates with previous studies indicating thatthe effort of reporting the amount of generated C&D waste in somedeveloping economies is lagging behind, typically including China

Table 2A summary of reported research on C&D waste in different economies

Countries Number of papers Countries Nu

Hong Kong 37 Norway 3USA 17 Singapore 2Australia 13 Netherlands 2UK 10 Taiwan 2Malaysia 6 Brazil 2China 6 Thailand 2Germany 5 Korea 2France 5 Turkey 1Spain 5 Sri Lanka 1Greece 4 Japan 1Sweden 3 Bulgaria 1Italy 3 Denmark 1

(Wang et al., 2008), Malaysia (Begum et al., 2007a), Turkey (Esinand Cosgun, 2007), and Thailand (Kofoworola and Gheewala,2009). Future research is suggested to understand the status quoof C&D WM in emerging economies as a starting point to solveC&D waste problems which can actually borrow experiences fromthose developed countries/regions.

4.2. An in-depth analysis of the C&D WM research

4.2.1. Defining C&D wasteSo far, there is a lack of consensus about the definitions of C&D

waste in literature. Research has helped understand C&D waste bytracing back its origins. For example, C&D waste is defined as thewaste that arises from construction, renovation, and demolitionactivities (Kofoworola and Gheewala, 2009). It may also includesurplus and damaged products and materials arising in the courseof construction work or used temporarily during the process of on-site activities (Roche and Hegarty, 2006). Similar reports on C&Dwaste origins can be found in Fatta et al. (2003), Shen et al.(2004) and Hao et al. (2007).

Research has also interpreted C&D waste by its composition.The European Waste Catalogue (EWC) provides a comprehensiveclassification of C&D waste in line with its compositions. AlthoughC&D waste is often included as one of the forms of municipal solidwaste (MSW), the C&D waste is considered being heterogeneous bycomparing it with the general MSW (e.g. household waste) or otherindustrial solid wastes (ISW) (e.g. hospital waste and computerwaste).

Different perspectives on C&D waste, actually, imply differentwaste management philosophies. In Japan, C&D waste is consid-ered as construction by-product rather than waste, therefore, con-siderable efforts were given to reuse or recycle it (Nitivattananonand Borongan, 2007). Each study tends to define C&D waste basedon the characteristic of its research question. Only by defining thewaste specifically can results of the study be meaningful for differ-ent practices.

It is noticed that C&D waste as an integral term is increasinglyused in literature. While from the landfill’s perspective it makesno difference to use this term to stand for all solid wastes to bedealt with, C&D waste is not a rigid concept to indicate their spe-cific origins. The two waste streams are considerably different interms of their volumes (Bossink and Brouwers, 1996; USEPA,2002; Li, 2006). This echoes with the discussion in Section 4.1 thatthe concept of C&D waste is used to represent inclusively materialwaste from all construction activities without confining to stage ofconstruction or demolition.

While the above papers defined the term ‘‘C&D waste’’ by view-ing it as tangible wasted materials, there is another stream of re-search stating that C&D waste should include non-value-addingwork in construction (Serpell and Alarcon, 1998). This viewpointcan be traced back to an early study by Skoyles (1976) who drew

.

mber of papers Countries Number of papers

Kuwait 1Finland 1Ireland 1South Africa 1Canada 1Switzerland 1Iraq 1Portugal 1Cyprus 1India 1Other 3Total 147

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a distinction between direct and indirect C&D waste, or even ear-lier Taylor F.W.’s (1856–1915) scientific management approaches,in particular his controversial Efficiency Movement. Direct wastecomprises of a complete loss of materials – this is the wasted mate-rials mentioned by most researchers. By contrast, indirect wasterefers to a monetary loss – for example, waste due to concrete slabthickness larger than specified by the structural design. This state-ment was also supported by the following studies including Pinto’s(1989), Serpell and Alarcon (1998) and Formoso et al. (2002). Thedefinition enables researchers to consider both the material lossand the non-value-adding work. However, this belief somewhathas been overlooked by existing studies, evidenced by the limitednumber of studies on this topic. One explanation is that wastedmaterials in construction are easy to see, as well as relatively easyto measure (Formoso et al., 2002). It is advisable that the areaneeds to be given more attention in future studies, although notnecessarily putting under the umbrella of C&D waste management.

4.2.2. Measuring C&D wasteC&D waste is something tangible thus triggered considerable

research to measure it using quantitative approaches. Statisticsfrom various studies have reported the amount of C&D waste gen-erated in different economies. It is logged that the US constructionindustry generated over 100 million tons of C&D waste annually(Mills et al., 1999), and approximately 29% of solid waste in theUSA is from the construction sector (Rogoff and Williams, 1994).In the UK, C&D waste contributes more than 50% of the overalllandfill volume (Ferguson et al., 1995) and 70 million tons ofC&D waste is discarded annually (Sealey et al., 2001). Cravenet al. (1994) reported that construction activities generated 20–30% of all waste entering Australian landfills. From 1993 to 2004,the annual generation of C&D waste in Hong Kong has more thandoubled, reaching about 20 million tons in 2004 (Poon, 2007).About 23% of the solid waste in Hong Kong comes from the con-struction sector (EPD, 2006).

The above research reported the waste volumes in absoluteterms, which enable the general public to realize the severity ofC&D waste as a concomitant of construction activities. Researchalso reported the percentage of C&D waste in the total municipalsolid waste (MSW). It can be seen that among total MSW theC&D waste is a major proportion that deserves a research disciplinein its own right. C&D WM is becoming an emerging and prevailingdiscipline. Some research tried to compare these reported percent-ages in order to discover the reasons leading to the high or lowwaste generation rates. For example, Tam (2008) mentioned thatC&D waste forms 19% and 14% of the waste disposed of at landfillsin Germany and Finland, respectively while in Hong Kong the per-cent is about 38%. However, these comparisons should be treatedwith caution because the percentage is influenced by not only con-struction but also other factors such as economy scale, population,territory and behaviors in managing waste, etc. Researchers haveintroduced waste generation rate (WGR) as a more comparableindicator in different economics.

WGR is a variable that helps understand waste management inthe construction sector. Bossink and Brouwers (1996) investigatedmaterial waste rates in Netherland and compared them with thosein other countries to identify the consequence of using differentconstruction techniques, work procedures, and common practices.McDonald and Smithers (1998) and Formoso et al. (2002) con-ducted research on WGR in Australia. Poon led a series of research(e.g. Poon et al., 2001, 2004a,b,c), investigating WGRs for variousconstruction materials in Hong Kong. Tam et al. (2007) assessedthe WGRs affected by sub-contracting relationships and projectstypes with their correlations.

Methodologies adopted for obtaining data for estimating WGRsare diverse. These typically include direct observation (Poon et al.,

2001), comparing contractors’ records (Skoyles, 1976), question-naire and telephone survey (McGregor et al., 1993), sorting andweighing the waste materials on site (Bossink and Brouwers,1996), collecting data through consultation with constructioncompany employees (Treloar et al., 2003; Tam et al., 2007), andtape measurement and truck load records (Poon et al., 2001,2004a). Normally, two approaches are prevailing: classifyingwasted materials into different categories or treating them as awhole. Since Skoyles (1976) examined WGRs related to 37 materi-als individually, many later studies (e.g. Bossink and Brouwers,1996; Treloar et al., 2003) followed his approach and investigatedWGRs by differentiating material wastes. Other studies (e.g. Poonet al., 2004a) investigated C&D waste without them being sortedon-site; by treating the waste stream as a whole, they derived ageneral rate such as volume (m3) or quantity (tons) of waste gen-erated per m2 of gross floor area (GFA).

Lu et al. (2010) summarized the three main functions of WGR:first, it can provide quantitative information for benchmarking dif-ferent construction waste management practices; second, it helpsraise people’s awareness about WM in construction; and third, itassists contractors in developing effective construction WM strat-egies. This echoed with Formoso et al. (2002) who suggested thatWGR provides an effective way for assessing the performance ofWM because it usually allows areas of potential to be pointedout and main causes of inefficiency to be identified. By measuringC&D WM performance based on the WGR, different C&D WM prac-tices can be benchmarked and effective strategies for WM can bepossibly developed.

4.2.3. C&D waste management strategies4.2.3.1. Three ‘‘Rs’’. C&D WM research and practice have beenguided by a ‘‘3Rs’’ principle, which is also known as the hierarchyof C&D WM. The principle refers to the 3Rs of reduce, reuse, andrecycle, which classify WM strategies according to their desirabil-ity (Peng et al., 1997). The 3Rs is meant to be a hierarchy, arrangedin ascending order of their adverse impacts to the environmentfrom low to high. Reduction is considered as the most effectiveand efficient method for managing C&D waste. It can not only min-imize the generation of C&D waste, but also reduce the cost forwaste transporting, disposal and recycling (Poon, 2007; Esin andCosgun, 2007). As the highest priority for managing C&D waste,it is not surprising that reduction has been examined extensivelyby many researchers. These studies have developed various solu-tions for waste reduction, which can be generally summarized intofive categories (Seydel et al., 2002; Begum et al., 2007b), encom-passing: (1) reducing waste through government legislation; (2)reducing waste by design; (3) developing an effective waste man-agement system (WMS); (4) use of low waste technologies; and (5)improving practitioners’ attitudes toward waste reduction.

Reuse means using the same material in construction more thanonce, including using the material again for the same function (e.g.formwork in construction) (Ling and Leo, 2000) and new-life reusefor a new function (e.g. using the cut-corner steel bar for shelves;using the stony fraction for road base material) (Duran et al.,2006). It is the most desirable option after reduction because a min-imum processing and energy use is achieved (Peng et al., 1997).

When reduction and reuse become difficult, recycling is desired.Tam (2008) summarized that recycling can offer three benefits: (a)reducing the demand for new resources; (b) cutting down transportand production energy cost; and (c) utilizing waste which wouldotherwise be lost to landfill sites. So far, in comparison with thoseof reduction and recycling, relatively fewer studies have been con-ducted to address issues on reuse. Two major concerns on recyclingare the economic viability and acceptability of recycled materials.Typically, Tam and Tam (2006) found that from a purely economicpoint of view, recycled materials are only attractive when they are

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competitive with virgin materials in terms of cost and quality. Inter-estingly, in contrast to a common sense, the cost of virgin material isactually cheaper than that of recycled materials (Tam and Tam,2006). Besides, the general public often worries about the qualityof reused or recycled materials. It has been informed by the 147 arti-cles that a number of studies have focused on the examination of thefeasibility and characteristics of recycled materials.

4.2.3.2. Life cycle thinking (LCT). The thinking of C&D WM should beextended to the whole lifecycle. Each stage throughout a projectlifecycle (e.g. conception, design, construction, operation, renova-tion, and demolition) has contributions, either direct or indirect,to the effectiveness of C&D WM (Osmani et al., 2008; Esin andCosgun, 2007). Researchers have reported factors including design,contractual, and procurement could also influence the generationof C&D waste. For example, Osmani et al. (2008) estimated thatapproximately 33% of on-site construction waste is related directlyor indirectly to design while on the other hand only few attemptshave being made to minimize waste during the design process. Forexample, Baldwin et al. (2007, 2008) aimed to describe how mod-eling information flowing in the design process might be used toevaluate design solution when seeking to reduce construction wastein high-rise residential buildings. Tam et al. (2007) demonstratedthat waste generation has a direct link with sub-contractingarrangements.

The LCT in C&D WM can be better understood by putting itinto the wider context of the construction industry. The LCThas been highly promoted in the industry as a solution to itsmany problems such as low trust, discontinuity, fragmentation,risks, lack of sustainability, etc. After a long period of education,the LCT has now become more welcoming, evidenced by manyLife Cycle Assessment (LCA) or Life Cycle Cost (LCC) methods.However, the LCT still has a long way to go. The LCT for C&DWM will depend on the fate of the LCT in the construction indus-try. As examples of LCT for C&D WM, Craighill and Powell (1999)developed a lifecycle assessment methodology to measure theenvironmental, social and economic impacts of alternative meth-ods for managing C&D waste. Hao et al. (2007) suggested that theoverall efficiency of C&D WM will largely depend on how to inte-grate the information and processes involved in managing C&Dwaste throughout a project’s lifecycle.

In the framework as shown in Fig. 3, it is worth noting that thereare two different lifecycles. One is the construction project lifecycle,commonly understood as a process from conception, design, con-struction, operation, and maintenance to demolition. Hao et al.’s(2007) study adopts this concept. The other is called waste materiallifecycle, starting from the extraction of raw materials, through pro-cessing, construction, using, and demolition and recycling, to finaldisposal. The concept of material lifecycle has been seen in the dis-cussions of sustainable development. The study by Craighill andPowell (1999) uses this concept. Although the two lifecycles havea large degree of overlap, it seems that the material lifecycle makesmore sense of the C&D waste; it helps to trace the material processand identify the potential waste areas where an improvement canbe made. For example, by mapping the waste handling processesas a specific segment of the material lifecycle, Shen et al. (2004) pro-vided an alterative tool for assisting in planning WM procedures onsite and serving as a useful vehicle to enable the comparison of dif-ferent WM practices. Lu et al. (2006) optimized the waste handlingprocess by employing mathematical models and information tech-nology. This is resonated with a study proposing to use waste chainwhich seems more promising to describe the flow of materials andthe generation of C&D waste (Yuan et al., 2010).

4.2.3.3. Polluter pays principle and waste charging scheme. Based onthe ‘‘polluter pays principle’’ (PPP), waste charging schemes (WCS)

are promulgated in many economies as an effective strategy formanaging C&D waste. A WCS is devised to impose a levy on thosewho dispose of their C&D waste into public landfills. Therefore, itis also called landfill charging scheme or waste disposal chargingscheme. The charging scheme is not only intended to provide an eco-nomic incentive for stakeholders to reduce waste but also to encour-age reuse and recycling of wasted material thereby slowing downthe depletion of limited landfill and public filling capacities (Haoet al., 2008). Economists give it a theoretical explanation – the lowcost of C&D waste dumping generally leads polluters (C&D wasteproducers) to dispose of most of their waste in landfills, while soci-ety has to incur the environmental cost resulting from the waste dis-posal. The policy maker must thus ensure society does not incurexternal cost through possible approaches (Duran et al., 2006). Byusing the WCS, the policy maker could try to internalize the exter-nality by ensuring that polluters incur the external costs (Craighilland Powell, 1999). This situation summarizes the PPP and inspiresmost modern environment legislation (Duran et al., 2006).

It can be found from the literature that only limited research hasbeen conducted to investigate the development of WCS. Research ofthis kind generally adopted cost-benefit analysis (e.g. Johnston andMincks, 1995; Begum et al., 2006). These important works outlinedthe belief for developing C&D WCS – if no other legislative commandand control, economic considerations have a major influence onwhether conducting C&D WM; an effective WCS should, therefore,grant economic viability for contractors to conduct C&D WM. Re-search has also investigated the effectiveness of these WCSs. Forexample, in Hong Kong, since December 2005 the government hasintroduced a WCS (EPD, 2006). This was reported as being effective;C&D waste was significantly reduced after the implementation ofthe WCS (Hao et al., 2008; Chui, 2007). In Shenzhen, China, the cur-rent charge for dumping C&D waste into landfills is about 5.88 Yuan($0.86) per ton (Yuan, 2008), which is much lower compared withthat in other countries and regions, i.e. HK$125 ($16.13) per ton inHong Kong (Hao et al., 2008).

Some researchers treat the waste charge as a penalty (Tam,2008) while others treat it as an incentive (e.g. Hao et al.,2008). Actually the existence of the two different perspectives to-wards the same charge/levy is owing to the absence of the PPP atthe very beginning. The thinking of shifting from a penalty to anincentive is not simply a rewording game but implies the wayforward for the PPP; contractors should be educated that payingfor pollution is an obligation thus any saving through C&D WMcould be deemed as an incentive. Another debate is that contrac-tors are not the single polluter in the construction sector, there-fore, current practice to charge contractors only is neither fair noreffective. Thus, in practice, although not commonly adopted, thesector is seeing an Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) tocharge material vendors for the waste they generated. Theoreticalresearch is also exploring whether it will be more effective for aWCS to charge all related stakeholders of a construction projectwho actually contribute to C&D waste, either directly or indi-rectly. Therefore, future studies are suggested to be conductedto enhance the effectiveness of WCS by adopting new WM con-cepts (e.g. from PPP to EPR).

4.2.3.4. Effective C&D WASTE management needs multidisciplinaryefforts. The C&D WM is a multidisciplinary effort needing coordi-nated inputs from different disciplines. Any waste managementstrategy should be considered in the framework of administrative,financial, legal, planning and engineering functions. This is in linewith the trend that C&D waste management is becoming animportant issue of sustainable development, which concernsenvironmental, social, and economical development as a whole.The importance of multidisciplinary efforts has been increasinglyacknowledged in both waste management research and practice.

W. Lu, H. Yuan / Waste Management 31 (2011) 1252–1260 1259

Through a critical review of the existing literature, it is noticed thatresearch on C&D WM mainly focused on the ‘‘hard’’ technologieswhile paid scant attention to the ‘‘soft’’ measures. For example,how to reduce waste generation through promoting practitioner’senvironmental awareness by training? How to integrate the ISO14000 and a company’s processes to truly improve WM perfor-mance? How to measure the attitudes of the stakeholders involvedtoward C&D WM? Future research is recommended to investigatethe effective WM strategies by envisaging its multidisciplinarynature.

5. Conclusions

This paper developed a framework for understanding the C&DWM studies as archived in selected scholarly journals. The proposedframework was organized like a set of gauges; in using this frame-work, one can switch the pointers to different angles to positionan existing study. Thus it can help readers quickly grasp a generalpicture of the C&D WM research. Compared with traditional ‘‘read-ing papers and making notes’’ method, the approach with the assis-tance of NVivo software presented in this research is turned out tobe effective to understand research of a given discipline.

By following the framework, a systematic analysis of existingC&D WM studies was conducted and major findings can be sum-marized as follows:

� C&D reduction, generation and recycling are the three majorinterests of researchers in the discipline of C&D WM over thepast 15 years.� In the future, more work is essential to investigate C&D waste

issues in project design, maintenance, and demolition stages.� Current C&D WM research mainly focuses on material use,

demolition, recycling, and disposal; future studies are recom-mended to be extended to the upper nodes of the material life-cycle, such as material production and delivery.� It is determined that the majority of research efforts have been

given to the material loss in construction rather than the non-value-adding work as an intangible waste. More studies in thefuture might be needed to examine the non-value-adding workin construction.� WGR is an effective indicator for measuring C&D waste and

benchmarking C&D WM performance in different economies.However, more research is desired in developing economiesfor devising effective C&D WM strategies by measuring andcomparing the WGRs. Meanwhile, a clear and unified definitionof WGR should be made to enable the comparison and bench-mark of C&D WM in different economies.� Based on the ‘‘polluter pays principle’’ (PPP), waste charging

schemes (WCS) are promulgated in many economies to manageC&D waste. To further promote the effectiveness of WCS, it issuggested to further enhance effectiveness of WM approaches(e.g. waste charging scheme) based on new WM concepts (e.g.Extended Producer Responsibility).

Acknowledgments

The work described in this article is financially supported byThe Hong Kong Polytechnic University. The authors would like tothank the three anonymous reviewers for their constructivecomments.

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