Waste management on construction sites

This paper presents an approach for the management of waste arising on construction sites. The approach is implemented in a planning system that respects technical, economic and environmental constraints. This system targets to reduce the environmental impacts of construction waste and to reduce costs for construction waste management by increasing the degree of waste valorisation, reducing waste quantities put into storage centres for ultimate waste and by an efficient use of processes such as haulage. The system presented consists of two modules. The first one provides a detailed estimation of waste quantities that are generated on a construction site by a ‘bottom-up’ approach based on an aggregation of all elementary waste quantities generated by the integration of each construction product. The second module allows an elaborated analysis of the waste flows on construction sites and leads to the determination of an optimised waste management taking into account different intrinsic constraints of the construction site as well as the local economic situation.