A construction and demolition waste management model applied to social housing to trigger post-pandemic economic recovery in Mexico

Abstract

Buildings consume 40% of raw material and primary energy and generate 35% of industrial waste worldwide, making this sector play a main role in raw material depletion, energy consumption and carbon emissions which provoke great environmental impact and worsen Global Warming. Latin American countries including Mexico have the world’s highest urbanisation rate (84%) but lack effective construction and demolition waste (CDW) management to thrive in regenerative sustainability, climate change mitigation and post-pandemic economic recovery. This work applies the Spanish current model to quantify on-site 61 Mexican social housing CDW with surveys to workers and supervisors as an additional source of data. The results of the case study show that social housing consumes 1.24 t.m−2 of raw materials and produces 0.083 t.m−2 of CDW. Cement-based, ceramic and mixed CDW represent 83.44% of total CDW. When considering inert soil as a recyclable resource, 78% of the remaining CDW ends in landfills and only 22% of it goes to recycling plants. The implementation of this methodology will deliver sustainable CDW management in Mexico, by minimising CDW production, promoting related legislation and allowing replacement of current construction materials for eco-efficient ones. Furthermore, these data can broaden the Spanish coefficients of the construction resources that become CDW to build an internationally sourced database.

Circular Economy and Buildings as Material Banks in Mitigation of Environmental Impacts from Construction and Demolition Waste

“…However, for countries that do not yet have these methodologies, the creation of a standardized digital database is an alternative for greater efficiency in analyzing this information. In this sense, Mercader-Moyano, Camporeale, and López-López (2022) [93] apply a methodology in a case study of the construction of popular housing in Mexico, with which it is possible to estimate the amount of waste generated throughout the construction and its impact in terms of embodied energy, carbon emissions, and disposal of waste.…”

“…Regarding CDW management processes, Mercader-Moyano, Camporeale, and López-López (2022) [93] warn that in less developed countries, such as Mexico, the laws are not strict, and there is no supervision over the disposal of this waste, which ends up in irregular landfills. Berge and Blottnitz (2022) [97] assess that there is an underreporting of the generation of construction and demolition waste, which, in addition to irregular disposal, can be reused in the informal market.…”

Integrated Framework Towards Construction Waste Reduction: The Case of Egypt

“…Undoubtedly, inadequate C&DW management (C&DWM) has a negative impact on the construction industry's efficiency, effectiveness, value, and profitability [22]. Within this context, Memon et al [15], Park et al [23], and Jalaei et al [24] have claimed that the C&DW has a detrimental impact on the national economy and the TBL of sustainability.…”

On the integration of Impact Assessment and Circular Economy: a literature review

“…CE PRINCIPLES P1 P2 P3 P4 P5 P6 P7 A construction and demolition waste management model applied to social housing to trigger post-pandemic economic recovery in Mexico (Mercader-Moyano et al, 2022) X X A framework for sustainable and circular system design: Development and application on thermal insulation materials (Wiprächtiger et al, 2020) X X X X A Life Cycle Analysis Approach for the Evaluation of Municipal Solid Waste Management Practices: The Case Study of the Region of Central Macedonia, Greece (Banias et al, 2020) X X X A material and component bank to facilitate material recycling and component reuse for a sustainable construction: concept and preliminary study (Cai & Waldmann, 2019…”

“…only superficially discuss that connection by suggesting the use of Strategic Environmental Assessment to deal with waste management problems in Africa. Another topic many of the results focus on is the developing or mixing of CE indicators to assess the sustainability of CE measures(Kovačič Lukman et al, 2021;Mercader-Moyano et al, 2022;Morsy & Thakeb, 2022;Picatoste et al, 2022). However, even though there are many circularity indicators the identified need is for frameworks to aid in the selection of CE indicators for sustainability assessments.…”