Exploring key barriers to effective material waste reduction in UK construction projects

Construction material waste (CMW) is a hot topic with strong links to sustainability and ongoing targets towards net-zero agenda. Despite growing awareness, UK construction consistently wastes approximately 100 million tonnes of materials per year. Barriers preventing effective CMW minimisation must therefore persist, which this study aims to identify. Understanding barriers is prerequisite for mitigating the industry’s alarming issue. Sequential mixed research design was adopted. Twelve semi-structured interviews obtained opinions from construction experts to identify emerging barriers. Subsequently, survey was used for ranking barriers based on their impact. Findings from 59 responses convey lack of accountability among professionals, with widespread apathy towards waste minimisation fuelled by poor incentives and training. Counter-intuitively, results suggest that industry has become over reliant on recycling to reactively manage waste as a low-risk option, meaning less resource is allocated to preferential practices that minimise waste before production. The findings can be used as a basis to examine interrelationship between the identified barriers, waste minimisation methods, and the circular economy principles by using the systems thinking. This would assist decision-makers in understanding the issue surrounding CMW and help in examining scenarios to overcome waste minimisation barriers, thereby enhancing sustainability in construction and assisting effective cost management.