Abstract
Renovation and refurbishment of the existingcommercial building stock is a growing area oftotal construction activity and a significantgenerator of waste sent to landfill in Australia. Awritten waste management plan (WMP) is awidespread regulatory requirement forcommercial office redevelopment projects. Thereis little evidence, however, that WMPs actuallyincrease the quantity of waste that is ultimatelydiverted from landfill. Some reports indicate anabsence of any formal verification or monitoringprocess by regulators to assess the efficacy ofthe plans. In order to gauge the extent of theproblem a survey was conducted of twenty fourconsultants and practitioners involved incommercial office building refurbishment projectsto determine the state of current practice withregard to WMPs and to elicit suggestions withregard to ways of making the process moreeffective. Considerable variation in commitmentto recycling policies was encountered indicatinga need to revisit waste minimisation practices ifthe environmental performance of refurbishmentprojects is to be improved.
Highlights
Australian office building markets in most major cities can be described as mature as they have a high proportion of older buildings
One of the experts interviewed for this study estimated that a 1000 square metre office refurbishment is likely to generate an average of 130 cubic metres of waste
38% of respondents said that waste management plan (WMP) were required for all the commercial refurbishment projects that they had been involved with and a surprisingly comparable 38% of expert respondents said that WMPs were either not required at all or required in less than 25% of cases
Summary
Australian office building markets in most major cities can be described as mature as they have a high proportion of older buildings. Waste Management Plans (WMPs) have been a standard requirement for most significant development in the majority of Australian local government areas for some time (McDonald and Smithers, 1998) It is not clear, that WMPs are having the intended environmental effect of increasing the percentage of construction waste diverted from landfill beyond the impact that market forces and social goals alone might generate. A recent example is the Council of the City of Sydney's extensive Policy for Waste Minimisation in New Developments, including Waste Management Plan templates for the demolition phase, construction phase and use of premises phase. As the above discussion suggests, WMPs have become the standard means of regulating construction waste minimisation in Australia They seem to have been widely adopted despite there being little objective evaluation of their effectiveness as a tool to achieve improved levels of reuse and recycling in the industry. 30 The Australasian Journal of Construction Economics and Building [Vol 7, No 2)
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