Environmental impact assessment of mobile recycling of demolition waste in Shenzhen, China

Both developed and developing economies are under enormous environmental pressure due to a significant amount of construction and demolition waste (CDW). This presents urgent need for the recycling CDW. Mobile recycling of CDW has gained growing popularity in recent years, particularly in metropolis with high-dense population. This study aims to assess the environmental impact and benefit associated with the mobile recycling of demolition waste (DW), which was overlooked in previous studies on this topic. Using the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), a total of 15 mobile recycling projects in Shenzhen were investigated. GIS was employed to measure the real distance to improve the precision of evaluation while social WTP was utilized to transform different impact indicators into a unified monetary value. The total environmental impact and benefit of mobile recycling was 0.42 RMB/ton (about US$0.06/ton) and 2.6454 RMB/ton (about US$0.38/ton) on average respectively. The average value of environmental impact at DW transportation, pretreatment, crushing and screening, residue disposal and recycled aggregate delivery stages was 0.11 (about US$0.02/ton), 0.04 (about US$0.01/ton), 0.16 (about US$0.02/ton), 0.10 (about US$0.02/ton) and 0.13 RMB/ton (about US$0.02/ton) respectively. Global warming potential (GWP) and land occupation (LO) were the top contributors to the total environmental impact. Environmental benefit primarily derived from the avoidance of land occupation. These results draw a comprehensive picture to better understand the mobile CDW recycling that provides a future direction to improve the CDW management. (C) 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.