Quantitative sustainability assessment of remanufacturing waste reinforcing steel

Abstract

Construction is a major contributor to the solid waste stream globally and various recycling strategies are being evaluated to recover valuable resources. As a novel strategy, remanufacturing waste reinforcing steel bar (rebar) pieces from concrete waste to produce nails was applied on an industrial scale to prove the technical feasibility, where a group of alternatives were developed based on commercially available industrial machinery. The calculated economic and environmental feasibility values are sufficiently high for industrial application, and the most appropriate remanufacturing technological alternative was identified. The sustainability equation was solved to find the social feasibility and overall remanufacturing sustainability index. Rebar waste remanufacturing has a high triple-bottom-line sustainability index of 0.885. Based on the proposed process, small remanufacturing companies can be developed, thereby aiding employment and human development by earning profit of 1904-8880 USD/day.The findings of this study are beneficial to decision makers in government and industry and are globally relevant because concrete waste is ubiquitous worldwide.