Explore potential barriers of applying circular economy in construction and demolition waste recycling

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2021.129400Get rights and content

Highlights

  • Social network analysis (SNA) was applied to build a directed-multivalued network.

  • The framework of potential barriers in C&DW recycling moving to a circular economy (CE) was summarized.

  • The interactions between potential barriers were quantified and a network model was established.

  • Promotion and application of recycled products is the key stage for shifting C&DW recycling to CE.

Abstract

The circular economy (CE) aims to reduce resource input and systematically avoid or reduce waste. In addition, the CE is an essential framework for achieving sustainable development. Understanding the barriers to construction and demolition waste (C&DW) recycling development under the CE model can promote sustainable C&DW management. This study used social network analysis (SNA) to explore the potential barriers, extent and key stage of the transition to CE for C&DW recycling in Guangzhou, China. The results show the following: 1) The network was loose and did not show a clear trend towards a certain point, indicating that the development of current C&DW recycling shows a lack of effective management mechanisms to control and constrain the barrier factors. 2) The key barriers to the network include inadequate incentives from the government sector, inadequate supportive policies, insufficient publicity and education on the recycling of C&DW, and an inadequate legal framework for the management of C&DW. The key stage of the “control power” and “adjustment ability” is the promotion and application of recycled products. 3) The network had three core cluster positions. The authors proposed corresponding suggestions for the results, which will provide theoretical guidance for policy-making for the transition of recycling C&DW move to CE, enabling timely advancement of CE initiatives in the construction industry.

Introduction

In recent years, as urbanization has accelerated in China, including the construction of new urban areas and the renovation of old urban areas, building renovation has become an important field to promote green economic recovery after the “COVID-19 pandemic.” This renovation consumes substantial amounts of natural resources. It creates a lot of construction and demolition waste (C&DW), which consists of muck, gravel, waste mortar, concrete blocks, asphalt blocks, waste plastics, waste bamboo, and other components. Globally, more than 10 billion tons of C&DW are produced every year, of which approximately 700 million tons are produced in the United States (Jain et al., 2015), approximately 820 million tons in the European Union (Gálvez-Martos et al., 2018), and approximately 2.36 billion tons in China, making it the largest producer of solid waste in the world (Zheng et al., 2017). According to the National Bureau of Statistics of the People's Republic of China, an average of 550 tons C&DW is produced per 10000 m2 of construction area, and the contribution rate of construction areas to urban C&DW production has reached 48% (NBSPRC, 2019). However, in China, C&DWM is currently insufficient, and only 10% of C&DW in most cities is transported to designated consumption places (Huang et al., 2017). Due to the large volumes produced, diverse components, and the complex nature of C&DW, its unreasonable disposal not only results in a substantial waste of resources, but also causes persistent pollution and harm to the ecological environment.

C&DW management (C&DWM) is an important part of the government's strategy for achieving sustainable development (Alan et al., 2017). Aslam et al. (2020) compared the C&DWM in the United States and China and found that the generation of C&DW is related to population, urbanization, GDP, and C&DWM measures. Wu et al. (2020) showed that non-inert waste recycling is critical for improving C&DWM in Hong Kong. Germany is the world's first country to recycle C&DW on a large scale and the first to pursue environmental labeling, with C&DW recycling rates currently reaching more than 90% (Chen et al., 2020). According to the latest EU statistics, the average recycling rate (including reuse, primary, and secondary recycling) of C&DW in the EU reached 89% in 2016 (Taboada et al., 2020). The 14th Five-Year Plan for Circular Economy Development issued by the National Development and Reform Commission in July 2021, highlighted that the comprehensive utilization rate of bulk solid waste and construction waste in China will reach 60% by 2025, which still has considerable scope for progress compared to developed countries (NDRC, 2021).

The need for the development of a circular economy (CE) has been a broad consensus topic in the international community, in relation to which Germany, Japan, Europe, and China have enacted legislation to implement CE principles (Ranta et al., 2018). The successful implementation of a CE plan usually involves the joint efforts of various economic and social stakeholders to realize the circular flow of materials and related efficiency benefits (Geng et al., 2012). Bilal et al. (2020) investigated the current situation of CE in the construction industry in developing countries and found that the overall level of CE implementation in that industry in developing countries was 58%. In addition, a study conducted by the British Building Research Establishment (BRE) shows that the British economy can save as much as 130 million pounds by reducing C&DW by 5% (Ajayi and Oyedele, 2017). The construction industry has the greatest potential to adopt CE (Brambilla et al., 2019), because it can not only bring social and economic benefits and increase GDP and employment opportunities but also reduce the exploitation of natural resources. In addition, the implementation of CE initiatives often requires social support, including legislative and financial subsidies (Govindan and Hasanagic, 2018, Levanen, 2015). In the new issued of the EU CE action plan, the EU intends to launch 35 policy and legislative proposals to comprehensively promote CE development by the end of 2023, with the core content of “proposing to build a sustainable product policy framework covering product design, consumption, and manufacturing” (EUC, 2021).

Ritzén and Sandström (2017) stated that CE is rarely implemented in practice and found nine barriers to CE development in the construction industry, including financial, structural, operational, attitude, and technical aspects, and concluded that the elimination of these barriers requires more thorough innovation and destructive changes. Xue et al. (2010) found in their research on the barriers to CE implementation at the government level in China that lack of awareness and financial support are the main barriers to CE implementation. Mahpour (2018) identified 22 potential barriers in the transition process from C&DWM to CE from the three dimensions of behavior, technology, and law and concluded that “the use of limited recyclable construction materials” was the highest priority barrier factor in the two dimensions of behavior and law and “the dismantling and classification of ineffective C&DW” was the highest priority barrier factor in the technical dimension. Yuan (2017) studied the challenges faced by C&DWM in Shenzhen and found that barriers existed, such as a “lack of a mature regulatory environment to manage construction waste” and “multi-sectoral participation in the construction waste management process without a “leading role."

In previous studies, the factors that hindered the development of C&DW resource utilization were analyzed from different stages and perspectives, most of which were only assessed qualitatively (Akinade and Oyedele, 2019; Bao et al., 2020; Ginga et al., 2020). Researchers and practitioners have recognized the importance of life cycle thinking and quantitative analysis and have carried out their work through input-output (Meyer et al., 2019), system dynamics (Liu et al., 2020), BIM (Akinade and Oyedele, 2019), and material flow analysis (Jain and Singhal, 2019). While acknowledging these contributions, further research is required in a similar way to present a systematic approach that covers the entire building life cycle.

However, little attention has been paid to the extent of C&DW recycling that has shifted to the CE mode and the interaction between these potential barriers, largely because it was difficult to quantitatively analyze it. To fill this gap, the potential barriers among different stakeholders in the C&DW recycling industrial chain were identified from a full-life cycle perspective (including four stages of source generation, recovery, recycling, and promotion and application of recycled products), taking Guangzhou of China as an example. The objectives of this study were as follows:

  • 1)

    Explore the extent and the key potential barrier factors in the transformation of C&DW recycling industry into the CE mode;

  • 2)

    Determine which stage is the key stage in the development of C&DW recycling under CE;

  • 3)

    Provide strategies to promote the development of C&DW recycling shift to CE.

Shifting toward CE in C&DW management has significant economic and environmental implications for emerging economies. Understanding the extent to which it occurs and the associated barriers have important implications for environmental management and industrial policy across emerging economies.

The remainder of this paper is organized as follows. Section 2 presents the detailed research methods, including index definition and selection, data collection and processing, as well as construction of the barrier factor network model. Section 3 discusses the results of model and provides the corresponding suggestions; and the conclusions and implications are presented in Section 4.

Section snippets

Social network analysis (SNA)

A “social network” is a collection composed of social agents as nodes and their relationships, among which agents can be individuals, groups, and other entities (Scott, 2013). The process of C&DW recycling usually involves a variety of participants, who are embedded in a variety of institutions, interacting differently, such as through power relations and mutual assistance. Current, research has proven the effective application of the SNA analysis method in architectural research (Gan et al.,

Network attributes

We adopted Diestel’s (2005) convention that states that sparse networks have a density < 0.25, whereas dense networks have a density > 0.75. According to Eqn. (1), the entire network density was 0.045, which is a low value. It was indicating that the network is sparsely connected. The smaller network density reflects the smaller mutual influence between each node, and the probability of network impact on these nodes as a whole is lower, which indicated that the CD&W recycling in Guangzhou lacks

Conclusions and implications

This study broke through the management of C&DW recycling was limited to periodic studies, and it was difficult to quantitatively analyze important issues. The model revealed the complex interaction among the barriers of stakeholders in the process of C&DW recycling development in the CE mode. The major findings are as follows:(1) The current C&DW resource development process lacks an effective management mechanism, and it is difficult to control and restrict the existing potential barrier

Funding

This work was funded by the Humanities and Social Science Fund of the Ministry of Education of the People's Republic of China (No. 20YJCZH097), the “13th Five-Year” Plan of Philosophy and Social Sciences of Guangdong Province (GD19CGL23), and Guangzhou Planning Office of Philosophy and Social Science (No.2020GZGJ185).

CRediT authorship contribution statement

Jingkuang Liu: Conceptualization, Formal analysis. Piao Wu: Writing – original draft. Yuhan Jiang: Conceptualization, Validation. Xuetong Wang: Conceptualization.

Declaration of competing interest

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

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