At present, waste from China’s many construction sites accounts for 30% to 40% of all urban waste in China. Many localities, however, lack sufficient space to dispose of such building and demolition material.
Therefore, most construction waste is temporarily piled up or put in a landfill. This practice not only takes up large areas of land but can also severely pollute ground water and adjacent rivers, as dust, paint, oil and others pollutants are slowly washed out.
Currently, less than 1% of construction waste matter is reused and only 5% of Chinese cities are capable of recycling such waste at all. This issue is now receiving increased governmental attention and Beijing, Shenzhen, Qingdao and the part of Sichuan worst hit by the earthquake were chosen as pilot areas for construction waste recycling. Shanghai has already successfully increased its reusing of construction waste to over 60%.
