Waste Management at Construction Sites in Oman

Abstract

"The undesired or waste materials are universally acknowledged to threaten all kinds of life. Additionally, due to its negative implications, it is recommended that they must be disposed of without devastating the human health, flora, animal health, water as well as the welfare of society and in the process, comply with new regulations. In other words, waste management is considered as a basic need in most societies. As a result, a number of waste management techniques such as composting, recycling, incineration, among others have been employed on previous occasions. However, due to the social, economic, and environmental impact of this methods, they must be assessed using different techniques such as modelling. Statistics show that approximately 45% of waste materials emanate from the construction industry. Since construction is a very important activity in human life, it is therefore necessary to explore and examine waste management at the construction sites in various countries in order to establish how best to deal with the devastating effects cause by wastes. The primary goal of this research is to compare, examine, investigate and explore the issue of waste management at the construction sites in Oman and see how some of their techniques compare with the UK. In the process, the impact of the current waste management system was assed using the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) approach where it is social, environmental and economic implications were assessed to see which management system approach is the best. The primary instruments of collecting data in this research were basically survey questionnaires and interviews at construction sites. The analysis and synthesis of data was conducted using SPSS, mean score rankings and correlation of coefficient, r. Research questions in this research were based on the review of previous literature on the problems that are associated with material waste at the construction sites in Oman and other countries In UK and from which the research design was constructed. The findings of the research indicated that, the waste management in Oman is far behind when compared to that of the UK and besides, there are some level of waste management practices that are already in play but the local citizens of both Oman and UK are not aware of. This research work concludes by making some suggestions on how to improve the current state of waste management in Oman, the limitations that were encountered during the research process and making some recommendations for future studies. I In this case, it was recommended that the government of Oman establish a scientifically engineered landfill that is very environmental sustainable to help the already existing landfill in Al Amarat and there should be training programs that will educate the citizens of both countries on waste management. Since one of the limiting factors of this research was the fact that small-scale corporations were not taken into considerations, it was recommended that future research works should try and encompass the small-scale corporations in their research works. "