Has China’s Construction Waste Change Been Decoupled from Economic Growth?

Haobing Wang,Ping Zhang,Qiyue Zhang,Sisi Xia

doi:10.3390/buildings12020147

Haobing Wang, Ping Zhang + Show 2 more

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https://doi.org/10.3390/buildings12020147

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Abstract

Construction waste management is crucial to the sustainable development of the construction industry and environmental management, and China has the highest construction waste emission in the world, making it typical and representative globally. In this paper, we conducted an empirical study on the relationship between the change in construction waste and economic growth at the provincial level in China from 2009 to 2018 based on a decoupling model and spatial analysis methods, and we reached the findings as follows. (1) Most provinces in China are still in the stage of continuous growth of construction waste emissions, and about 30% have reached the peak (inverted U-shaped), prominently characterized by inter-provincial spatial heterogeneity and agglomeration. (2) The decoupling types between inter-provincial construction waste and construction economic growth in China are dominated by weak decoupling, expansive coupling, and recessive decoupling, and they are changing in general with positive signs but in a more diversified and complex trend. (3) Based on the analysis results, this paper classifies China into three types of policy zones, namely transformation, adjustment, and stabilization, and proposes differentiated and targeted recommendations to provide an important decision basis for the design of construction waste management policies in China and similar countries and to help achieve a “zero waste society” in early global development.

Highlights

This paper finds that the decoupling relationship between inter-provincial construction waste and construction economic growth in China is dominated by weak decoupling, expansive coupling, and recessive decoupling types, followed by recessive coupling, strong negative decoupling, and strong decoupling types, and no weak negative decoupling is found
2009–2018 and economic growth in China based on the decoupling model and GIS tools and reached the following conclusions: (1) Provincial construction waste emissions in China are characterized by significant spatial heterogeneity and agglomeration, and most of the provinces with large emissions are concentrated in the eastern coastal and central regions, with construction waste emissions in Jiangsu and Zhejiang at a high level for a long time
(2) The decoupling relationship between inter-provincial construction waste and construction economic growth in China is dominated by weak decoupling, expansive coupling, and recessive decoupling types, while recessive coupling, strong negative decoupling, and strong decoupling types are less common

Summary

Introduction

As a major obstacle in promoting a “Zero Waste World” and ecological civilization, the issue of construction waste management and its recycling has become a key area of concern for governments, scholars, and the public [1,2]. With the rapid pace of urbanization and industrialization, the production of construction waste is growing at a high rate and has become a major environmental problem that restricts the sustainable development of cities and villages around the world, making the implementation of targeted and appropriate policies and actions for construction waste management an urgent need [3,4]. According to What a Waste 2.0 released by the World Bank in 2018, China is the country with the largest emission of construction and democracy waste in the world, and the United. China is nearly three times that of the United States, which is more than the sum of the countries ranked second to sixth.

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