Improving quality of construction and demolition waste – requirements for waste audit

Construction and demolition waste (C&DW) is one of the priority areas in Europe according to the Action Plan for Circular Economy. C&DW is the largest contributor to waste streams generated in Europe, accounting for over 800... [ view full abstract ]

Construction and demolition waste (C&DW) is one of the priority areas in Europe according to the Action Plan for Circular Economy. C&DW is the largest contributor to waste streams generated in Europe, accounting for over 800 million tonnes per year (excluding soil).  The waste is typically downcycled, used for backfilling, disposed in landfills or incinerated.  The recycling and also reuse potential of C&DW is still underexploited. The major challenge is the poor quality of the waste, due to poor sorting resulting in heterogeneity and potential content of hazardous substances. 

A pre-demolition waste audit is the crucial starting point in ensuring proper C&D waste management – it is a tool to identify and assess the materials to be removed from the building or infra-structure and their potential value prior to the demolition or renovation activity. It is also an essential tool when planning and implementing safe and sound deconstruction. Such audits are essential since they enable all stakeholders involved to get information of the composition of waste and make it easier to find markets and recovery options for different waste types.  

A framework for predemolition waste audit was developed in a contract work financed by Commissions’ DG for Internal Market, Industry, Enterprises and SMEs (DG GROW) in 2016. The guidelines prepared by Tecnalia (Spain), Risk & Policy Analysis (UK) and VTT (Finland) are establishing the basic responsibilities of the actors, principles of waste auditing, identification of waste streams, reporting and verification of audit outcomes, and recommendations for further waste treatment.  The detailed and practical implementation of most of the elements of the waste audit framework will be decided on national level once waste audits become mandatory across EU. A number of elements (e.g. thresholds for mandatory audits, templates for reporting, methodologies for sampling etc.) need to be set at national level for the implementation of the waste audit.