This is Round Table.
Shanghai, Zhejiang and five other provinces and municipalities in East, Central and Southwest China have been called out for the ways in which construction waste has been handled or mishandled in these two jurisdictions.
China has already seen decades of rapid urbanization and countless construction projects over the past several decades but it's still not too late to adopt tougher oversight on waste processing and management.
Hello I'm Lai Ming and this is Round Table, today with Newholing and Steve Hatterley we find out how worried we need to be about construction waste and what needs to be done to make building projects healthier for us and for our environment in the long term.
Now seven years ago I had the chance to decorate my own apartment and one day I received a call from my property management company saying that there is there in a bit of urgency emergency and I need to have my garbage which was neatly piled in front of the residential building.
An important point.
Yeah neatly piled in front of the apartment building.
I need to have them removed as quickly as possible.
Question, sorry to interrupt, what type of garbage are you talking about here?
All kinds of garbage.
I mean the common practice here in China I dare say that is that when we buy a new apartment which is more often sometimes pre -owned and you move in you you the first step you decorated is to have a big guy with a big sledgehammer moving he will probably live in the apartment she will he will use the sledgehammer
to tear down, dismantle everything in the apartment including the tiles, the some walls that may or may not be safe to dismantle but he will go ahead nonetheless.
So everything, the ceiling, the walls, the tiles, everything and they will be neatly packed per request of the municipal authority at the unit at the building at the front gate of the building apartment building and they will be stored in plastic bags.
So unless the dust and debris would roam freely in the community.
Anyway the call was to have them removed as quickly as possible and after several rounds of argument with the property management lady I didn't win the fight and so at the end of the day I conceded to having a certain amount of money deducted from my renovation deposit which I paid beforehand and then
the next day or two days later a huge truck came in and picked them all up and have them moved somewhere else.
So for the average resident like me our way of handling construction waste is one principle far from sight far from mind.
Far from sight far from mind.
I don't know where the government.
Writing that down now.
That's not the common practice I have to say because we have to.
It's the liming practice.
We have to admit there are different practices and different let's say good and better than good property management.
For example in my community residential community every time when someone is decorating their houses or even cracking down walls according to liming stories tearing down walls.
I would see a posted on actually at the front gate of the building from the property management saying for example which apartment on which floor are doing this construction work in their homes first to apologize for the noise but the general time would be from X date to Y date and during which in let's
say 10 or 15 days there will be heavy noises excessive noises we would make sure that they only happen during daytime from 8 o 'clock to 6 o 'clock or something and then you get to see that yes sometimes I would also notice certain compile maybe not as needed neatly as liming construction waste.
I had a good foreman.
He made sure of that.
Yeah there will be.
A foreman. Goodness me.
Very official. Very official but for my case I would notice occasionally notice some of these construction waste in around the front gate area but again the property management would have them taken away in one at least well at most two days.
So yes these kind of practices happen in different places at least here in major.
But this is only so far as you know.
You don't know where the garbage waste ends up.
Precisely. Right. Which is part of the issue that we're talking about today.
We've mentioned the term haven't we a couple of times construction waste.
What is that exactly?
It's debris. It's also unwanted material and it's generated as a result of remodeling your apartment.
For example. Like a used bathtub.
Yeah exactly. A toilet.
Or on a smaller scale or even redoing flooring right.
You'll find things like tiling that you throw away and you can get this stuff from excavation, from buildings, from refurbishments as we talked about renovations.
Also from building demolition on a larger scale right.
So we're talking about a lot of different materials here.
Wood. Metal. Bricks.
Glass. Also comes into that category as well.
Concrete. In other words, stuff that's difficult and maybe a little difficult to know how to dispose of.
They're usually solid waste.
Nothing that's composable.
Nothing that you can fill in a kitchen waste.
Well I think yeah 99 % true but also mud falls into this category as well on a larger construction scale.
Certainly and since we used the Lightning story as a story to introduce what is happening here actually that is not the majority of if we're calling this a problem.
It's not the majority of the problem because for every let's say average household you would only demolish or decorate your house one or two times if you're lucky but actually the majority of construction waste would happen in a relatively larger scale if we are tearing down a building and trying to
construct a new one.
If we're building Universal Studio here in Beijing if we're introducing a Disneyland here in Beijing then definitely there will be construction waste.
Yeah apartment complexes too.
Definitely. The building of and the tearing down of.
Shopping malls where you need underground parking spaces.
I mean that would involve a lot of mud.
And the reason we're calling it a problem is because the resource utilization rate of construction waste in China is now currently less than 10 % far lower than the 70 % in European countries and we see this problem happening in other developing countries as well for example in 2019 in Brazil one of the biggest
emerging economies recycling is close to non -existent less than 1 % and well I kind of feel that I I kind of get what they're doing they're doing really hard to construct their country trying to put up new buildings and trying to focus on utilizing the resources by saying resources we are talking about human resources
fund money all these things to first construct something new and the pollution or let's say construction waste situation or how to very effectively reuse the construction waste is a bit down on the list.
But definitely now at least for China it is a problem that we want to address.
Yeah. And I think when we you know people who live in the society think about recycling we think about our plastic bottles our water bottles and the bottled boxes or you know the plastic packaging that you get your takeout food in or something like that.
But there is another side and it's a bigger side and it's now 2024 and they talk about the importance of the circular economy as a really important approach to addressing the environmental and also the economic challenges of our time and it it is I think one of the less discussed but equally important
components of the concept is this practice of circular demolition.
Those are two words I've never seen next to each other before circular demolition demolition but in the context of this circular economy demolition is considered to be an opportunity to recover and reuse really valuable resources.
So when we are when they are the construction companies building these new apartment complexes and they have that waste wood concrete for example or they're tearing down a building we're talking about in the circular economy instead of just disposing of those materials trying to make use of them once
again hence the term circular you take it and you take the waste and then you make new products out of that so that you can use them again.
And ideally that process should happen even before you start constructing when you're making a plan of building up a new building you would know that when you're for example laying the base of that building definitely you would dig something out and you should have a plan of what to do with the dig
outs. I'm pretty sure they're not called dig outs but you know what I mean.
Having a plan you're right is part of seeing these materials as not the end of their life cycle right but just the the finish of their first use and then the beginning of their second use that's what they're trying to do.
Right circular economy makes out like a fresh word to an English speaker or someone who's not familiar with the industry but I'm sure that some level of recycling and some level of re -utilization of seemingly unwanted material has already been at play.
I remember there being plans of reusing mud dig out from creating a lake or something I think the Jing Shan mountain to the north of the Forbidden City is the result of massive construction project trying to create lakes and ponds and landscapes and that kind of practice has long been executed throughout
Chinese history but it's more of a problem now because for the past few decades China was really in a stage of rapid development and rapid urbanization so I'm not sure that everybody who was so eager to erect a building so that people can move in and be productive can spare a moment to really think
so thoroughly about recycling every material that they come across while they're at it.
Yeah and you know the materials that go into the construction of a building for example concrete how often do we think about concrete never right especially when we're thinking about recycling we never consider concrete but concrete causes up to 8 % according to the guardian of global CO2 emissions and there's
a really glaring need to limit the production of new concrete or new cement.
It generates a huge amount of carbon dioxide as I mentioned and they want to and they need to recycle the components that they already have.
Concrete is another great example of something that's really bad for the environment.
Right it's heavy, it's bulky, it's not easy to move around and not easy to break down.
It overheats our cities as well.
And if you have too much of it and building landfills then it could potentially cause damage to the ecosystem and let's not mention even more hazardous material like plastic and even certain gels or chemicals that you use in construction and if we don't recycle them if we don't sort them handle them
properly we will one day perhaps regret what we've done even as we pursue even further urbanization.
Yes and if we look at the bigger picture because roundtable is super environmentally aware yes thank you and the idea is that we talk about environmental issue quite a lot we appeal to our audience to take care of their garbage to sort the things that they do not want and recycle them.
So we do this a lot but if you take a look at the bigger picture you see that China generated over 2 billion tons of urban construction waste a year which was about 8 times that of household waste.
So an average Joe could do is a bit limited if we do not address the construction waste problem and it is reviewed that construction waste accounted for over 40 % of the total urban waste in China in 2023.
It's almost half. It's almost half and when it comes to what we can do to address the problem actually different areas different provinces and cities are doing quite a lot in terms of rolling out policies trying to and also incentives for different companies construction sites to take care of the issue
for example in Shenzhen we see companies involved in the utilization of construction waste can enjoy benefits such as tax reductions credit facilities and electricity price discounts and in Shanghai appropriate subsidies are provided for the construction of district level facilities for the recycling
and utilization of construction waste.
I also have the policies rolled out by Henan province by Shenzhen province who promised a lot of different local governments are figuring out a best way for their local construction waste policy.
Yeah Shanghai is a great example they have a total of 27 facilities for the recycling of decoration and demolition waste they have a pretty big capacity as well 11 .21 million tons per year and if they follow through with their plan by the end of 2025 Shanghai will achieve a capacity of utilizing 14
.2 million tons of construction waste per year.
It's good that it's on the radar now right and communities and cities big cities are aware of the issue and their building facilities to try to deal with it.
It's easier for biggest cities to pay attention to issues like that.
Fair point. Shenzhen essentially was a fishing village that was built from scratch and now is one of the biggest cities in China and around the world and so they must have seen a thing or two with regard to the way they face challenges in handling and construction waste.
Likewise Shanghai and other bigger cities across China.
The issue with China is that so much happened so fast in the past few decades and the rate at which construction projects were carried out was I believe far beyond the rate at which we become aware of the issue of construction waste and the rate at which we build up facilities to process a construction waste
and the other issue with China is that we are the world's manufacturing powerhouse and stuff especially construction related materials that we make in this country they are being made at such efficiency and they're being made at such low cost that it doesn't make sense to invest further more into recycling.
I think there must be a staging during which we believe it's more economically feasible to produce new concrete to produce new construction materials than to recycle older ones.
I think what you're talking about is the term called waste valorization and we're talking here with this term about materials that cannot directly be reused or recycled.
What they can be is valorized through some different innovative techniques.
For example demolition waste can be turned into solid recovered fuels for energy or used in the production of alternative building materials like concrete blocks.
So if the product can't be directly recycled it can be broken down and reused in different ways.
But the broken down process is actually relatively more complicated than we imagined.
For example if we're talking about constructing a new building and what to do with the construction waste well the primary processing of construction waste requires professional equipment and involves at least two stages of crushing and screening.
For the first crushing stage actually the construction waste would undergo initial crushing followed by magnetic separation and initial screening to separate rebar and soil.
And then for the second crushing after the secondary stage lightweight materials are separated and the remaining construction waste is screened using a specialized system to classify different types of construction raw materials according to certain standards.
And then they figure out what are some of the construction waste that can be recycled into what exact use.
And that is definitely a very professional practice that requires most occasions requires a specialized company to come to the site deal with the construction waste and maybe make a profit out of it.
And that has started to be the common practice at least the common practice in Beijing for relatively a longer period of time.
Because Lamming has mentioned a little bit about in the previous stage it's possible that we would only put the construction waste as landfills and bury them underground and just leave them there.
And that generates a problem that is if the land is reused for another purpose it is possible that it is not going to be feasible for new constructions to be to be built up on that site.
If you dig out the existing basically landfill of previous time waste the waste can sometimes be a mixture of construction waste and household waste making the dig out of those areas or those materials hard to be recycled hard to be dealt with.
So at least from now on what we need to do is to make sure all of the construction waste as well as the household waste are handled properly so that no further questions or no further problems would be created in I don't know the future construction of something new.
So it's best to have a plan before any action is taken and to make sure that any processing is done in one go as compared to let's say we go back and dig out something that we've already buried down there and causing further trouble.
But the entire process sounds complex and complicated and convoluted so that I don't think it's easy to execute on an individual level.
I think I can imagine maybe a big construction company one that is run by let's say a provincial level state owned enterprise.
I mean there are plenty of construction companies owned by provincial level state owned enterprises so you can see them in Jiangsu, Xiangjian and then in Sanzhan, Dong.
So each province might have that these big companies are easy to oversee and be held responsible for any illegal wrongdoing that they do.
But I'm still thinking about the individual big guy with a big sledgehammer that comes into your house and tears down everything.
I'm not sure he's aware he's properly informed with regard to how to sort and handle everything that he destroys in your apartment.
And neither do I have trust in the persons who are coming to pick up the neatly piled garbage that you laid in front of your apartment building.
And then let's not even begin discussing the issue with the rural areas where we've also seen massive construction projects from migrant workers who have made a lot of money working in coastal areas and they want to show that they've made a good living, they are successful in what they do, they want
their neighbors, their villagers to know that they worked hard and that is whatever comfort they built for themselves.
So even for rural areas, transportation again is a big issue.
So how is it that what can we do to negotiate such complexity of issues with regard to construction waste recycling and processing?
One of the things that they talk about is called, and this is specific to housing, but they call it prefabricated housing and that's where they construct offsite in factories and then they transport to the building site when they're ready to erect it.
This is cost efficient, it's really good for the environment, it's a greener alternative in the construction sector and by reducing construction waste which accounts for 40 % of landfill and carbon emissions, it talks about or it tackles the major environmental concerns head on.
There was a study conducted in 2022 that showed modular construction can cut carbon emissions by up to 45 % compared to conventional techniques of building on site which is a massive, massive increase in efficiency.
This is very specific to home building, I'm not sure if that could be applied to apartment construction as well.
But back to your point Honglin about having a plan in place, I think when you have prefabricated housing then you're very aware of your plan for the building and I think you're also very aware of what you can do with the building after it's completed its use.
And at a larger scale if we're talking about major cities with a lot of different construction sites working at the same time, actually Beijing provides a really good example by utilizing information technology to empower construction waste to management through technology.
Actually before entering the processing facilities, all construction waste is weighed on a scale and the data from the scale along with footage from civilian cameras installed in these waste management facilities is connected in real time to the data platform of the Beijing Municipal Management Committee.
We're talking about actually here in the city it operates for mixed processing facility or fixed processing facilities and 33 temporary ones, meaning that if you are individual households you have this construction waste that they probably would be shipped to these fixed processing facilities and if we're
talking about large scale construction site, these 33 temporary ones can go to these sites and take care of the construction waste on site.
And also perhaps to borrow from the way in which Beijing residents go about recycling their family and domestic waste and that is we, on the one hand, we have somebody in charge of the garbage bins in the neighbourhood, they make sure that people saw the garbage.
On the other hand, we also have freelance and volunteer, grandma and grandparents who would hover over the dustbins and pick up whatever can be recycled and reused.
So likewise I believe it's important for us to provide subsidy or any kind of support to make it worthwhile so people will be willing to spend extra time to recycle them and therefore making our environment safer.
