Major obstacles to improving the performance of waste management in China's construction industry

Purpose – The generation of construction and demolition waste in China is a pressing need to be minimized in order to alleviate the environmental burden. The effectiveness of implementing construction and demolition waste management in this economy, however, is very limited due to various barriers. Therefore, this paper aims to explore the major obstacles to managing construction and demolition waste in China.Design/methodology/approach – The views from Chinese practitioners were collected via a questionnaire survey. The respondents were invited to rate a total of 16 obstacles that hinder the effective implementation of construction and demolition waste management as gleaned from previous literature and six semi‐structured interviews. The results of the questionnaire were analyzed by ranking analysis and factor analysis.Findings – The findings show that “lack of a well‐developed waste recycling market”, “insufficient regulation support” and “waste reduction does not receive sufficient attention in constru...

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