Assessment of carbon emissions of building interior decoration and renovation waste disposal in the fast-growing Greater Bay Area, China.

Continuing urbanization and significant improvement of lifestyle have ushered in high demand for building floor area, inevitably leading to a rapid increase of interior decoration and renovation activities, which in turn produce a massive quantity of decoration and renovation waste (DRW). However, like many other countries with unremitting demand for building space and infrastructure, China has failed to attach adequate attention to DRW management. Using the yield-per-area method and life cycle assessment approach, this study aims to characterize the generation, flows, management and environmental impacts of DRW from commercial housing in nine cities in the Greater Bay Area (GBA), a highly developed economic zone in China.

Differences of methods to quantify construction and demolition waste for less-developed but fast-growing countries: China as a case study.

As China and other developing countries continue to urbanize over the next decades, construction and demolition waste (CDW) management has been becoming a significant challenge for urban sustainability in terms of the environment, economy, and safety. However, accurate estimations or statistics of CDW generation are absent from the official national report in spite of their importance to devise sensible interventions to tackle CDW-related problems. This paper examines and compares the applications of three prevailing methods for estimating CDW, including the weight-per-construction-area method (WAM), buildings' life span-based method, and weight-per-capita method.

Characterization of post-disaster environmental management for Hazardous Materials Incidents: Lessons learnt from the Tianjin warehouse explosion, China.

Hazardous Materials Incidents (HMIs) have attracted a growing public concern worldwide. The health risks and environmental implications associated with HMIs are almost invariably severe, and underscore the urgency for sound management. Hazardous Materials Explosion incidents (HMEIs) belong to a category of extremely serious HMIs.

Characterization of brominated flame retardants in construction and demolition waste components: HBCD and PBDEs.

The vast majority of construction material is inert and can be managed as nonhazardous. However, structures may have either been built with some environmentally unfriendly substances such as brominated flame retardants (BFRs), or have absorbed harmful elements such as heavy metals. This study focuses on end-of-life construction materials, i.