A case study on the effective implementation of the reuse and recycling of construction & demolition waste management practices in Malaysia

This paper presents a case study on the implementation of the construction and demolition waste management practices in the Malaysian construction sector. The scope was limited to the housing and high-rise buildings. Characterization of reuse and recycling potential was done using descriptive statistics. It is estimated that the waste generated by the housing sector is approximately 16% of the gross materials used, which is about 8.8 million tons/year, and 32% of such waste (approximately 2.8 million tons/year) has the potential for reuse and recycling. However, the high-rise building construction generates construction waste in a large quantity of more than 10 million tons/years (about 70% of the building construction waste), which shows a high potential for reusability and recycling. The reasons behind the low recycling potential for the construction and demolition (C&D) waste generates by the housing sector are found that its quality is low and contains some types of contaminants.