An Empirical Study of Building Related Construction and Demolition Waste Management : Waste Handling & Remodeling

Associated with the development and urbanization of cities, India has been experiencing a rapid increase in Construction and Demolition (C&D) waste. Till now, the generation rate of C&D waste has not been well understood or not explicitly documented in most of the cities, as the country is not following a specific quantification method for the estimation of C&D waste generation. A reliable estimate of construction and demolition waste generation is essential to create awareness about this stream of solid waste among the government bodies in India. However, the required data to estimate construction and demolition waste generation in India are unavailable. This work proposed an approach to estimate construction and demolition waste generation using the combination of the Site Visit (SV) method and Generation Ratio Calculation (GRC) method and demonstrated it by estimating construction and demolition waste generation in study area. The Waste Generation Rate (WGR) of primary materials from both construction and demolition sites in study area were calculated using Regression analysis and the quantification of C&D waste has been done with those WGRs using the selected method. The demolition waste from the study area of flat demolition mainly consists of 97.45% rubble and 1.57% steel. The steel segregated from the concrete was fully reused for civil works after processing. In the reused waste, about 88% was the concrete waste without any processing, used for basement filling, and 10% of the concrete waste was recycled and reused for the production of paver block. As most of the waste obtained from the demolition was reused for different purposes, C&D management in the demolition site can be considered as an eye-opener for the management practices currently followed in other sites of the country. This study and associated methodology may be useful as an expedient, economical, decision-making tool for stakeholders.