ABSTRACT
ABSTRACT The lifetime of buildings depends on their flexibility to be reused and, more and more, on economic questions as the annual costs for energy. Beside, most of the towns in dense populated environment do not grow anymore to their outskirts, but are redeveloped on their existing area. Consequently buildings of the last decades are replace by modern buildings with sustainable and architectural appealing design, so that the best parcels avail-able on site are revalued. Hereby the deconstruction and the management of construction and demolition waste of the existing buildings is a key issue in the development of sus-tainable construction. Prevention, re-use and recycling are the basic approaches to waste management. The Community's waste management strategy calls for the avoidance of waste generation and, as far as possible, that of waste disposal. Demolition methods have to be taken into account in order to reduce the amount of waste and to make it easier to re-use, including selective demolition, sorting and crushing operations. This contribution in-troduces waste management in reference to demolition techniques. In particular different demolition methods are presented for the main structural typologies and materials. Also the factors relevant to the choice of the demolition technique and its influence on the eventual recovery of materials are investigated. Further an overview on the most common fractions of demolition rubble as well as it answers the question, when on-site recycling of mineral debris is ecologically and economically reasonable and when off-site recycling or to deposit the demolition rubble is inevitable. Recycling is not only a question of the total costs of a deconstruction, but also depends on the fractions of the materials, which do not all permit recycling.
