Construction Waste Management in Nigeria Using the 3R Principle of the Circular Economy

The construction industry makes a significant contribution to the growth and development of any country through infrastructure development. However, the industry also generates huge amounts of waste, and these inadvertently impact on the environment and deplete finite raw materials. This underscores the need for the industry to adopt effective waste management strategies. Several such strategies including the reduce, reuse, and recycle (or 3Rs) principle have been discussed in the literature and employed in many developed and developing nations. The 3R principle forms the basis of the circular economy (CE), which has gained traction as a potential strategy to minimize construction material waste. The question of whether the concept of the CE can be adopted as a waste management approach in Nigeria continues to pique the interest of researchers and industry practitioners. Through a concurrent triangulation design in a cross-sectional survey, this study assessed waste management strategies adopted at the construction phase by Nigerian building construction firms (NBCF). A structured questionnaire was used to collect quantitative data from 243 firms, while semi-structured interviews with 65 professionals from 10 building construction projects in Lagos, Nigeria, were used to obtain qualitative data. The findings reveal that the reuse and reduce components of the 3Rs are the most adopted strategies, while recycling is the least, implying that the CE concept is used in principle by the NBCFs. The research lays the groundwork for future studies in construction material waste minimization through the adoption of CE principles.