Circular Economy (CE) based material selection: Development of a CE-based ‘10R’ evaluation framework for building construction projects in Sri Lanka

Abstract

The building construction industry is globally identified as one of the major consumers of materials. Thus, the material wastage in building construction projects is very excessive. In the Sri Lankan construction industry, it was identified that the main reason for generating material wastage is the absence of proper material selection criteria. The concept of Circular Economy (CE) has been obtained the world attention in reducing material wastage in the construction industry as it targets zero waste and pollution throughout the lifecycle of materials. Applying CE principles in the material selection not only reduces the wastage of materials but also reduces the use of virgin materials. Hence, this research aimed for developing a CE-based 10R evaluation framework for materials selection in order to reduce the wastage of materials in building construction projects in Sri Lanka. A comprehensive literature review was first conducted to review the concept of CE, CE principles and its importance for reducing material wastage in the construction industry. Deductive approach was chosen as the suitable research approach in this study. Survey method was applied as the suitable research strategy under quantitative phenomenon. A questionnaire survey was conducted with a conveniently selected sample of 58 industry professionals to collect the data. The collected data were analysed by using Weighted Mean Average (WMA) technique. As key findings derived through analysis, the level of importance of each CE principle for selection of materials was determined. Accordingly, the CE-based 10R evaluation framework for material selection was developed as the main implication of this research. Various strategies, such as reusing demolition materials, adopting prefabricated building components, developing plans to on-site recycle and using alternative materials were also proposed to implement the all identified CE principles assuring a successful application of the developed framework.