An overview on the hazards and handling methods of construction and demolition wastes: Special focus on recycled concrete aggregates

Abstract

With the demand increased in construction activities within the last century, several scientific research studies have been focusing on different aspects of construction and demolishing wastes, while considering the severity of environmental problems that they cause. This work presents the results of out an extensive literature survey in order to provide an overview on the hazards and handling methods of construction and demolishing wastes. Results of this literature review indicate that landfilling has been the most commonly used method, even though the recycling of the construction and demolishing wastes was found out to be the most environmentally-friendly solution. It was observed that groundwater and soil may be heavily affected by the leaching constituents of landfilled construction wastes. On the other hand, using these wastes in the form of recycled concrete aggregates was observed to eliminate these hazards. The results of literature survey pointed out that the use of demolished concrete wastes as recycled concrete aggregates could be widely adopted by construction sector only if the resulting concrete is of satisfactory quality. Hence, information on different quality aspects of concrete made of recycled concrete aggregates are presented systematically as a clear guide in this work, to verify its feasibility as an environment-friendly waste elimination method.