Construction Waste

Construction Waste

Waste is defined as “any material by product of human and industrial activity that has no residual value” (Serpell and Alacon, 1998). However this is not true for the construction waste, since it has a residual value. Hong Kong polytechnic’s defined construction waste as the by-products generated and removed from construction, renovation and demolition work places or sites of building and civil engineering structures”.

Construction uses many materials extract from deposit in the earth’s crust. Some of these materials are directly used at site, after simple processing and others are prone to complex manufacturing processes. It is found that the construction industry is a large consumer of energy intensive manufactured materials such as iron, steel, copper, glass, synthetic materials, cement etc. But the construction industry produces considerable amount of solid waste which is avoidable. Skoyles and Skoyles (1987) found out that construction of 100 houses has wasted materials which are sufficient to build another 10 dwellings. The wastage of materials in most of the construction sites in Sri Lanka are beyond acceptable limits.

There are two categories of construction wastes. They are,

 Process waste or Construction waste

 Demolition waste

Process waste

Process waste or Construction waste can be defined as the difference between the value of materials delivered and accepted on site and those used as specified and accurate measured in the work (Rafael, 1994). This can be broadly classified into 4 types as:

1. Natural Waste

Some wastage is unavoidable. There is a level beyond which it is not sensible to attemot to reduce waste since the cost of doing so will be greater than the value of the materials saved. Waste to a certain extent is inevitable on building y sites and this is generally recognized by everybody in the construction industry. This acceptable level of waste is referred to as natural waste (Skoyles and Skoyles,...