Sustainable Construction Waste Management in Australia: A Motivation Perspective

Abstract

Construction industry is one of the industries that generates and dumps heaps of waste to landfill. In Australia, about 40 % of the construction and demolition waste is disposed to landfill. Hence, state governments in Australia have initiated various strategies which aim to reduce construction waste. These include levy on construction waste and various proposals of zero waste strategies. Hence, some of the companies reduce, reuse and recycle the construction waste to reduce the amounts of landfill payment. Nevertheless, is monetary expenditure the only effective motivation factor which lead to a reduction in construction waste? Is there any other motivation factors which sucessfully power waste reduction? There are three major contributions in this chapter: (1) it perceives the idea of sustainable construction waste from whole building cycle perspective instead of construction and demolition stage alone. (2) It reviews the construction companies, contractors, government sectors and materials manufacturers’ sustainability issues in Australia’s construction industry from economics, social and environmental perspectives. (3) It examines the motivation of these companies in sustainable construction waste management under the lens of positive and negative incentive, goal setting and hierarchy of needs theory.