Identification of Waste Sources in Ready-Mixed Concrete Plants

Abstract

In today’s highly industrialized world, an enormous amount of wastes is originated from the construction industry. This type of wastes conversely affects both macro-economic conditions and environment of a country or a region. Therefore, waste management is an important aspect of project management. Although there is a wide variety of construction materials, concrete is still the mostly used one in the construction industry and thus has a big impact on the amount of construction-based wastes. Reducing such wastes is among the objectives of the waste management issue in construction projects. Accordingly, the determination of waste sources is the first step to deal with them. Based on these arguments, the current paper presents a study that aims to identify the sources of fresh concrete wastes in ready-mixed concrete (RMC) plants as a part of an on-going research project. Toward this aim, production and delivery processes of RMC were reported and discussed in a detailed manner from the perspective of waste management. As a result, four sources were identified for such wastes. It was also found out that only two types of these sources (i.e., over-order and residual RMC in the truck-mixer drum) are quantifiable.

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