A Study on Recycling Waste Materials in Construction Industry

The development of the construction industry has been greatly increasing over these decades. The high construction number produces several issues including waste. Waste materials in the construction industry have been one of the concerns due to high generation and most of them ended up in landfill. However, it is believed that these waste materials are recyclable. It is also adequate to be used in the construction industry for environmental sustainability as well as to reduce dependence on natural resources. Therefore, the primary objective of this research is to identify practices applied in the construction industry in recycling waste materials. Moreover, this study also serves the purpose to analyse the advantages and disadvantages of the common practices applied in recycling waste materials. Last but not least, it is expected as well throughout this study, that a recommendation may be made based on the effectiveness of recycling. To test the theories, an online questionnaire survey was conducted with 66 respondents from experts in the construction industry. The collected data further will be analysed using Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) version 26.0 software. From the results, the majority of the construction industry companies in Malaysia are aware of the waste management issue and practice waste materials recycling. The most recycled wastes are paper, cardboard, timber, and metal while the least recycled wastes are glass and asphalt due to their difficulties. Some of the waste categories are recycled by direct reuse methods such as timber and cardboard. Moreover, there is still room to improve the effectiveness of the current recycling system specifically in terms of operational cost. The current recycling system is beneficial in terms of resources, economic, and natural resource dependencies. Furthermore, the quality and reliability of the recycled products still need further improvement to be used as the main materials in the construction industry.