Elsevier

Journal of Cleaner Production

Volume 172, 20 January 2018, Pages 14-26
Journal of Cleaner Production

Estimating the environmental costs and benefits of demolition waste using life cycle assessment and willingness-to-pay: A case study in Shenzhen

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2017.10.168Get rights and content

Highlights

  • The environmental cost and benefit of demolition waste in Shenzhen are calculated based on life cycle assessment.

  • Recycling demolition waste can bring an environmental benefit of ¥1.21 per tonne.

  • Direct landfill will lead to an environmental cost of ¥12.04 per tonne.

  • Appropriate level of disposal charge can be established based on the approach.

  • The environmental impact of recycling concrete, brick, steel and mortar is investigated.

Abstract

Construction and demolition waste is one of the largest contributors to solid waste generation. Recycling is considered an effective strategy to manage construction and demolition waste; however, the environmental costs and benefits of recycling, compared with a traditional landfill strategy, have not been fully investigated. This study uses a life cycle assessment and willingness-to-pay methodology to investigate the environmental impacts of recycling 1 tonne of demolition waste in Shenzhen. The environmental impacts are global warming, ozone depletion, acidification, eutrophication, suspended particulate matter, solid waste, and land consumption. The results show that recycling can bring an environmental benefit of ¥1.21 per tonne while direct landfill leads to an environmental cost of ¥12.04 per tonne. The environmental costs and benefits of recycling concrete, brick, steel, and mortar, which are the most commonly seen types of component from demolition waste, are also investigated. The results can be used by regulatory authorities to establish strategies and policies, such as the provision of monetary incentives, in order to encourage recycling activities. The results can also be used to establish appropriate landfill charges.

Introduction

Construction and demolition waste (CDW) has a significant environmental impact which requires immediate action. In the European Union, 3000 million tonnes of waste are produced every year, of which 25%–30% is generated by the construction industry (Bravo et al., 2015). Similarly, in the United States, 530 million tonnes of construction and demolition debris were generated in 2013 (US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), 2013). Construction activities consume 25% of the virgin wood and 40% of the raw stone, gravel, and sand which are used globally every year (Kulatugna et al., 2006, Wu and Low, 2011). In addition to resource depletion, CDW has a significant impact on land degradation, global warming, and ozone depletion (Coelho and de Brito, 2012). For example, 14 million tonnes of waste are landfilled each year in Australia, 44% of which comes from construction activities (Lu and Tam, 2013). According to Bhada-Tata and Hoornweg (2016), disposal is a significant source of carbon emissions and landfill is a significant source of methane, both of which contribute to global warming.

Because of the negative impact of CDW on the environment, many studies have investigated its environmental impact. For example, in a Spanish case study, Oritz et al. (2010) used the life cycle assessment (LCA) method to evaluate the environmental impact of construction waste. Similarly, Coelho and de Brito (2012) investigated the environmental impact of buildings by using five waste management options—complete demolition, selective demolition, deconstruction of non-structural elements, full deconstruction and recycling, as well as full deconstruction and partial recycling. Selective demolition, which is the reverse of the construction process, has been introduced for easy recycling and reuse (Lu et al., 2009, Coelho and de Brito, 2013). The method can help reduce the overall demolition cost by reducing disposal charges (Lu et al., 2009). Many studies treat CDW in a similar way because both sources of waste are generated from the construction industry. However, it should be noted that the amount of demolition waste is significantly higher than the amount of construction waste. According to the US EPA (2013), demolition activities cause more than 90% of total CDW. As such, demolition waste should have a higher priority than construction waste. It should be noted that the exact contribution of demolition activities to CDW may vary depending on country-specific characteristics and site conditions. For example, demolition activities, which contribute to 74% of annual CDW in China, only contribute to 36% of annual CDW in Norway (Statistics Norway, 2017, Lu et al., 2017). In addition, the composition of construction waste and demolition waste varies significantly, indicating that waste management strategies developed for managing construction waste may be unsuitable for demolition waste management. According to Zhao and Rotter (2008), the composition of construction waste in China includes concrete, sand, brick, and stone, while the most significant components in demolition waste are brick and tile, followed by concrete. Because such composition differs significantly, it is useful to separate the evaluation process of the environmental impact of CDW. Moreover, many scholars use case studies to investigate the environmental impact of construction and demolition activities (Wu et al., 2015, Wu et al., 2016). It should be noted that case studies can be useful to evaluate the environmental impact associated with specific buildings or processes; however, case studies rely on data from individual construction and demolition activities such as the construction of a single family home (Cuéllar-Franca and Azapagic, 2012) and a commercial building (Zhang et al., 2013). Thus, case studies may offer limited guidance and reference for local governments which rely on local and regional analysis to establish CDW policies, such as charging appropriate fees for mitigating CDW's environmental impact.

Consequently, the current study aims to 1) investigate the environmental impact of demolition waste using the LCA approach; 2) compare the environmental costs and benefits of demolition waste from two different treatment pathways—recycling and landfill—using the willingness-to-pay (WTP) approach; and 3) investigate appropriate levels of fees and charges to mitigate the environmental impact of demolition waste. The results will be useful for regulatory authorities to understand the environmental costs and benefits of demolition waste and establish relevant strategies to reduce demolition waste. It should be noted that this study focuses on ordinary demolition waste management scenarios and excludes scenarios which include the occurrence of natural hazards, such as seismic hazard assessment and post-quake recovery (Jun et al., 2012, Faleschini et al., 2017, Zanini et al., 2017).

Section snippets

The environmental impact of CDW

CDW is usually defined as the solid waste which arises from construction, renovation, and demolition activities (Lu et al., 2011). Shenzhen is a rapidly developing megacity in China. According to Wu et al. (2016a), approximately 14 million tonnes of demolition waste have been generated annually in Shenzhen since 2010; moreover, because of the rapid urban development, CDW generation is expected to increase in the future. Wu et al. (2016b) used a geographic information system (GIS) to investigate

Research method

This study uses the LCA approach. The system boundaries, functional unit, and other estimation assumptions are explained in the following subsections.

Weights of environmental impact categories

Table 5 shows the demographic information of all respondents. According to Burns and Bush (2010), the sample size, N, can be calculated using the following equation:N=Z2xpx(1p)e2where z refers to the standard error with a confidence level of 95%; e refers to the accepted error, which is 5% in this study; and p refers to the estimated variance of the population and is 0.5 if the survey contains both continuous and categorical variables. Based on the above calculation, a sample size of 385 is

Discussion

Recycling demolition waste can have environmental benefits. In order to obtain the comparative benefits of recycling, it is useful to compare the environmental benefits with traditional landfill practices.

Two assumptions are made when calculating the environmental cost of landfilling. The first is related to the diesel consumption associated with landfill activities. This study selects one landfill site in Shenzhen and uses the daily landfill volume and the daily diesel consumption to calculate

Conclusions

Managing demolition waste is important for sustainable urban development. Because of the rapid urban development of China, a significant amount of demolition waste is generated each year. As such, investing in waste management activities, such as recycling and reusing, seems imperative. This study employs LCA and WTP approaches to investigate the environmental impact of recycling and direct landfill activities, thereby providing guidance for policy improvements such as the establishment of

Acknowledgement

This research was supported by the Australian Government through the Australian Research Council's Discovery Early Career Researcher Award funding scheme (project DE170101502).

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