Armanda Bastos Couto

Guidelines to Improve Construction and Demolition Waste Management in Portugal

The construction industry is a major contributor to excessive natural resource consumption, depletion and degradation; waste generation and accumulation; and environmental impact and degradation. The amount of waste generated by the construction and demolition activity is substantial. Surveys conducted in several countries found that it is as high as 20% to 30% of the total waste entering landfills throughout the world (Bossink & Brouwers, 1996). Moreover, the weight of the generated demolition waste is more than twice the weight of the generated construction waste. Other studies compared new construction to refurbishment, and concluded that the latter accounts with more than 80% of the total amount of waste produced by the construction activity as a whole. The building activity at historical city centres tends to be an important waste generator because both refurbishment projects and new projects often include demolition (Teixeira & Couto, 2000). Construction site activities in urban areas may cause damage to the environment, interfering with the daily life of local residents, who frequently complain about dust, mud, noise, traffic delay, space reduction, materials or waste deposition in the public space, etc. Regarding this theme, an attempt was made to order each impact by the importance given to each one in scientific publications, being the following the most frequently mentioned (Couto, 2002; Couto & Couto, 2006):

Strategies to improve waste management in Portuguese construction industry: the deconstruction process

The environmental impact of the construction activity has gained increasing importance in the last few years and has become a key challenge for the sector. The resulting inconveniences of the activities in a construction project are numerous. However, there are still many examples of an inefficient waste management. The deconstruction of buildings has gained more and more attraction in recent years as an important waste management tool. The aims of this paper are to discuss strategies and actions that should be implemented in Portugal to improve waste construction management by impelling the deconstruction process.