Differences of methods to quantify construction and demolition waste for less-developed but fast-growing countries: China as a case study

As China and other developing countries continue to urbanize over the next decades, construction and demolition waste (CDW) management has been becoming a significant challenge for urban sustainability in terms of the environment, economy, and safety. However, accurate estimations or statistics of CDW generation are absent from the official national report in spite of their importance to devise sensible interventions to tackle CDW-related problems. This paper examines and compares the applications of three prevailing methods for estimating CDW, including the weight-per-construction-area method (WAM), buildings’ life span-based method, and weight-per-capita method. Specifically, China has been chosen as the case study. This study implies that the weight-per-construction-area method is more appropriate because of the data availability and accuracy at a city or national level. The results of WAM indicate that a total of 4.1 billion metric tons (Bt) of CDW were generated in China in 2016, mainly from demolition waste (85%). Taking the changes of buildings’ life span into account, a projection analysis reveals that the cumulative CDW generation will be 50 Bt between 2017 and 2040 in China (equal to approximately 38 years cumulative generation of global municipal solid waste). Overall, the findings provide some methodological options for scholars, practitioners, and decision-makers to more accurately estimate the amount of the CDW and to develop a more environmentally sound management strategy.