Exploring Waste Generation Mechanism for Construction Projects

Construction waste has become a major source of municipal solid waste and thus prevented sustainable urban development. In order to address the substantial amount of construction waste, construction waste generation should be examined in detail to minimize the waste generation in construction processes and maximize the waste utilization after its generation. Based on work breakdown structure (WBS) and material flow analysis, this paper investigates the inputs and outputs of each work package, explores various functions of different materials in different work packages, identifies the material categories and finally discovers the waste generation mechanism for construction projects. This paper provides a systematic method to examine the waste generation for construction projects and could be utilized for construction waste estimation and utilization.