An assessment of the recycling of recovered demolition waste
materials was made for a typical commercial building in Thailand
with an assumed gross floor area of 60,000 m2 and concrete envelope.
The average quantities of the different materials from demolition
of the building were computed using Eq. (1) and the same
procedure as that for utilized for determining waste materials
generated from new construction. Wood was assumed to be used
for process heat, ferrous metals substituted virgin materials and
the down-cycling of concrete was used as aggregates in concrete
or backfilling in new construction. For example the average
quantity of metal generated from demolition was computed
according to Eq. (1) based on an assumed area of construction of
60,000 m2, an average waste generation rate of 18.99 kg/m2 for
new non-residential buildings and an average composition of
waste metal of 4%. Substitution in (1) yields 1.14 103 tons of
waste generated from the building demolition, of which approximately
50 tons is metals. Assuming 30% of all metal waste is recovered
and recycled (Table 5), then the total amount of metal