Evaluating the COVID-19 impacts on the construction and demolition waste management and resource recovery industry: experience from the Australian built environment sector

In some major Australian states, there has been a significant increase in construction activities to meet a growing population's needs and keep up with economic growth (Australian Bureau of Statistics 2022). Furthermore, Australian state governments are spending public funds to counteract the drop in the economy caused by COVID-19. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the government economic recovery plan proposed new initiatives to boost the construction industry. Among other things, the homebuilder project offered funds to construct a new home, substantially renovate an existing property or purchase a property off-the-plan (Victoria State Revenue Office 2021). This initiative has led to a surge of new developments, particularly residential housing (Yu 2021). The governments also have accelerated investment in government-funded infrastructure projects across Australia (Jotzo et al. 2020).

The management of the ensuing C&D waste has become a major challenge. The construction industry is accountable for 44% of the solid waste generated every year in Australia (National Waste Report 2020). Australia is known to be among the top ten countries listed in the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) for generating solid waste. In 2018–2019, Australia produced a total of 27 million tonnes of C&D waste (National Waste Report 2020). This emphasises the critical need for a better waste management practice to divert waste from landfills and to improve the resource circular economy (Shooshtarian et al. 2022). Therefore, it is necessary to design and implement a sustainable C&D waste management system due to the increasing amounts of C&D waste, the scarcity of landfills and the long-term effects of C&D waste disposal on the environment, economy and society.

However, to achieve sustainable C&D waste management system the major barriers need to be identified. Several attempts have highlighted these major barriers. To date, the lack of advanced technological capabilities and knowledge (Hyder 2012), the mechanisation of demolition works (Kim 2021), the geographic spread of products to be returned for reuse or recycling (Shooshtarian et al. 2022), inconsistent levy rates across states (Edge Environment Pty Ltd 2012), quality of the recycled material (Udawatta et al. 2015) and attitudes and behaviour towards waste management practices (Kim & Nguyen 2020) have been uncovered as key barriers for C&D waste management. In recent years, COVID-19 adds another layer of complexity to managing the large quantity of C&D waste in Australia, posing additional challenges to waste operators, recyclers and other relevant industry and government decision-makers.

Observations from the industry performance worldwide suggest that industry operators are going through unprecedented difficulties during the pandemic impact (Klemeš et al. 2020; Readling 2020; Waste Advantage 2020). Countries such as the USA have ceased recycling programs in some of their cities, as authorities have become concerned about the risk of COVID-19 spreading in recycling centres (Zambrano-Monserrate et al. 2020).

Some public and private organisations have attempted to discover the impact on the industry by inviting operators to express how their operations have been disrupted. For instance, a survey by the US. National Waste & Recycling Association (2020) discovered that the primary impacts on the industry are employee safety and health concerns, operational best practices, changes in revenues, services, waste streams and waste volumes. The survey also showed that waste hauliers are the most affected operators, staffing accounting for the greatest short-term impact, and two-thirds of participants indicated moderate to severe operations impacts due to COVID-19 restrictions. Another survey, facilitated by Waste Today magazine, showed that around 30% of respondents operating in the US waste management industry had been ordered to close their facilities by state officials or had voluntarily idled one or more facilities (Readling 2020). The survey results specific to the C&D waste stream showed that 50% of inbound flow had been affected from moderately to severely. Other reported impacts included 32% cases of layoffs (a further 21% were considering layoffs), and around 66% of businesses had put one or more purchases on hold. Love and Rieland (2020) state that given worker safety concerns, low market prices for scrap materials, a slowed economy and cheaper alternatives for disposal, many communities and businesses across the US have temporarily suspended the collection of recyclables.

With disruptions in waste recovery activities, the environment is under threat worldwide. There is evidence that demonstrates how this impact is damaging the environment. In some UK rural communities, disrupted services have increased waste mismanagement by 300% (You et al. 2020). Roberts et al. (2020) reported that with fewer options available, traditional waste management practices such as landfills and incineration are replacing more sustainable measures such as recycling, with adverse effects on the environment. Government organisations sometimes exacerbate the issue. For instance, the UK Environment Agency has allowed temporary waste and incineration ash storage at sites that further threaten the environment.

In Australia, except for a few industry-led inquiries, research on the COVID-19 impacts on waste recovery is limited. One example is the survey facilitated by the Australian Council of Recycling to further understand stakeholders experience during the pandemic (ACOR 2020). ACOR suggested that governments should consider the findings as part of the ongoing response to COVID-19. Also, Waste Management Resource Recovery Association of Australia (WMRR) updates the industry on COVID-19-related policies and measures in different Australian states. In the lack of empirical information demonstrating the effects of the pandemic on the C&D waste recovery business in Australian states, this research, for the first time, attempts to identify the significant implications by collecting the perspectives of key stakeholders.

In consultation with the experts and analysis of relevant literature the following hypothesis was developed:

In Australia, waste recovery activities are regulated at the jurisdictional level. One public organisation in each jurisdiction is responsible for governing waste-related activities (Shooshtarian et al. 2019). Such an organisation also produces information regarding the COVID-19 impact on the industry. This study targeted five major Australian states as a case study to achieve the main research aim. These states are Victoria (Vic), New South Wales (NSW), Queensland (Qld), South Australia (SA) and Western Australia (WA). As illustrated in Fig. 2, these states had the largest rates of waste generation and recovery in 2019.

An online interview method was employed to collect data relevant to the research aim. The interviews were conducted using the Microsoft Teams application. The interview consisted of several questions covering the main issues and opportunities regarding the development of the market for recycled C&D waste materials. As presented in the questions selected and analysed for this study sought participant experiences, their opinion on the impact of COVID-19 on C&D waste recovery activities and issues around the development of the market for recycled C&D waste materials.

To further guarantee the study's internal reliability of interview questions, a pilot interview was conducted with waste-related experts. The feedback from the pilot interview assisted the research team in optimising the interview schedule. Since the study required experts in the field, one of the main selection criteria for interviewees was the adequate experience in dealing with waste management in Australia. According to the literature review conducted in this study and expert advice, the most relevant stakeholder groups for interviews were identified. These groups include those who were involved in developing policy and practice of waste recovery (government officials and construction experts), manufacturing and recycling of construction materials (suppliers and recyclers) and providing consultation services to the other stakeholder groups (consultants).

Research participant recruitment was undertaken according to the requirements set by the Australian National Statement on Ethical Conduct in Human Research (National Health and Medical Research Council 2007 (Updated 2018)) and further obligations imposed by the human research ethics committees at RMIT and Griffith universities. The project industry partners, the Australian Sustainable Built Environment National Research Centre (SBEnrc) and the Waste Management and Resource Recovery Association of Australia (WMRR), assisted with the recruitment process. The two organisations provided the contact details of relevant stakeholders from their member networks. WMRR's members consist of waste recycling businesses. SBEnrc members include experts representing industry and government organisations. WMRR is the primary industry stakeholder for this work, while SBEnrc funded the research project. A purposive sampling strategy was deemed the most appropriate approach given the research timeframe. It was employed to recruit a wide range of participants across the C&D waste supply chain representing five Australian jurisdictions.

Email communication was used as the method of recruitment. An email with the project information sheet was sent to a list of participants compiled by the research team in one round. This covered 60 individuals with relevant experience in waste management and the resource recovery sector. The list consisted of the two organisation members and other experts identified by researchers. A reminder email was also sent to those who did not respond in the first round. Interview participation was voluntary, and attending the interview implies informed consent. The investigators maintained the privacy and confidentiality of all interview information as per the human ethics requirements.

The primary stakeholders who have a substantial role in the utilisation of recycled products (e.g. government, recyclers and construction professionals) are well represented in the sample size. As shown in Fig. 3, the largest category type was government officials (9), followed by recyclers (8), professionals working in the construction industry (5), construction material suppliers (3) and waste recovery consultants (2).

The interviewees were based in WA (n = 11), Qld (n = 7), Vic (n = 5), NSW (n = 3) and SA (n = 1). This shows a wider geographical spread across Australia. In terms of gender, five interviewees were female. The remainder was male, which echoes the gender balance in the construction industry. Furthermore, 20 of interviewees had more than 5 years’ of experience working in C&D waste management space. This suggests that interview responses properly represented the industry's atmosphere during the pandemic.

Each interview took, on average, 45 min and was audio recorded with prior permission. Audio data were carefully transcribed by a professional transcriber word-for-word. The research team further verified the quality of text data. Analysis of the transcripts was performed using the NVivo Pro 12 application (Di Gregorio 2000). This application facilitates codifying text-based qualitative data. A thematic analysis method was applied to identify emerging themes (Braun & Clarke 2006), with a combination of inductive and deductive reasoning approaches employed. The analysis began with a deductive or theory-driven coding system (a-priori codes) using the literature review/interview guide elements while creating additional new nodes (in vivo codes) inductively from emerging interview data.

As per findings, the COVID-19 pandemic has created some form of disruption to the C&D waste recovery industry through changes to their working shifts, supply chain interruptions, delays between the construction and demolition cycles, and the inability to retain or recruit a workforce. The interview participants from different industry sectors and government shared their lived experiences in the face of COVID-19 disruptions. The impacts varied across Architecture, Engineering and Construction (AEC) sectors; while public construction projects continued during the outbreak, there were significant impacts on residential and commercial projects. Despite the government economic support packages (e.g. Job Keeper,¹ the organisation had to reduce employees on some projects. Furthermore, the number of tenders for construction projects was also reduced. An organisation's ability to continue operating on public projects assisted its ability to endure the pandemic situation. Table 1 synthesises the key impacts shared by interview participants across the five states of NSW, QLD, VIC, WA and SA.

While many of the interview participants admitted the rapid implementation of COVID-19 safety protocol, including clearly divided shifts, wearing protective equipment and the use of hand sanitisers. Overall, the waste industry addressed many challenges through vertical integration and the continuation of building and construction projects. The following sections describe key impacts with specific interview examples across the five Australian jurisdictions.

Participants across the five Australian jurisdictions shared their experiences relating to the responses to COVID-19 disruptions and challenges. While most participants described their rapid responses as aligned with emergent safety priorities and efficient management of resources, this experience has also helped them to uncover a range of opportunities. Learning from these COVID realities, participants also developed consciousness around the need to leverage digital technologies, developed business contingency plans, created coalitions between government and industry, diversified supply chains, and reduced supply chain risks. The key responses are as follows:

As outlined in Results section, COVID-19 impacts on the industry have been diverse in the studied states. The following table provides an impact matrix developed based on interviewee responses. The impacts are categorised under five scopes: “construction and waste generation”, “employee engagement”, “transportation”, “processing and recycling” and “disposal”.

Table 3 shows that the construction and waste generation impact category have the most coverage in the interviews, followed by employee engagement. Furthermore, only “urgent implementation of safety protocols” was reported to impact all study states. Interestingly, restricted production and decline in demolition activities did not occur during pandemic restrictions. This is mainly related to the State COVID-19 policies, which consider construction and recycling essential industries. Such a matrix can be also used in other waste streams such as commercial and industrial waste (Aydin et al. 2017) and municipal solid waste (Abdallah et al. 2020) to investigate the potential impacts of the pandemic. Going forward, the authors summarise the following adaptive measures based on the findings.

This section is concerned with objective 3, where the primary adaptive measures in place are to be explored. Based on the interviews and examination of relevant literature, the following measures are identified:

This research has a policy implication for defining recommendations for circular economy as stated below. As envisaged by MacArthur (2013) and reinforced by other scholars (Della Torre et al. 2020; Munaro et al. 2020), one of circular economy objectives is to enhance resilience in the built environment sector. COVID-19 and associated uncertainties and impacts are an excellent opportunity to study potential pitfalls, impact areas, risk management, preventative strategies, and how stakeholders are adjusting to new conditions in both individual and collective manners. Future planning and practises that take into account all of these aspects will aid in the development of a resilient and circular built environment that will be prepared to accommodate uncertainties imposed by external factors such as pandemics.

This study by identifying the impacts of and responses to such uncertainties in the Australian context could inspire future circular economy guidelines. This fact also was echoed in the interview responses as presented in Table 2. Some of participants indicative statements collected in this study are provided below:

‘…there's obviously a long way to go, both in terms of C&D, and in terms of the waste industry itself. Re-evaluating where it sits and repositioning itself to be the frontend to the circular economy, and again …is an essential part of that’.

‘That's an example I think of putting things into place to head toward a circular economy, giving people the opportunity to consider non-virgin materials as well, as part of that exercise’ [P. 13].

‘I do believe that circular economy has actually come even more into focus and maybe has become something that people understand more than ever, just because of COVID. So circular economy really has to do with creating local markets and bringing the waste closer to yourself and the end products closer to where you live, and how you transport yourself and all of these things’ [P. 7].

‘I think there’s an opportunity there beyond C&D, and it sort of gets back to my point around the whole circular economy element that we need to think in the 20 year Waste Strategy, that we are going to start seeing more circulatory thinking, which sees materials coming in and out of C&I and C&D, moving through a broader life cycle process for materials, I think is gonna be really key’ [P. 3].