Waste Estimation in North Cyprus Construction Industry

ABSTRACT: The increasing amount of waste materials from construction is leading to the economic and environmental issues of cost inefficiency and environmental pollution. As such, different countries have come up with policies to reduce this type of waste. However, in order to enforce these regulations one should develop an awareness of the scale and the composition or texture of waste stream. The index of construction waste generation is a useful measurement to find out the amount of construction waste. This index could be further exploited as a yardstick to improve the viable performance of construction industry. This study aims to introduce a model of calculating the waste generation per gross floor area and waste generated area according to the mass balance principle for building construction in North Cyprus. This index was calculated for major types of materials by using the purchased amount of key materials and their material waste rate. The waste generated area for the materials with minor quantities was calculated jointly as a percentage of total construction waste. This suggested model was applied to a recently constructed residential building in Iskele located in North Cyprus. The waste generated area of this project was estimated as 43.87 kg/m2, with concrete waste as the major contributor to the index. Transportation records on site and also the data from other economies indicated the validity and practicality of the proposed model. The implementation of this model can be exploited to establish a benchmark for waste generation per area for the construction industry in North Cyprus. This however, demands conducting further large-scale investigations in the future. Keywords: Construction industry, North Cyprus, Waste management, Waste estimation. …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………