For a construction or maintenance project to have a low environmental impact, the material impacts on the environment and natural resources must be minimized.

This fact sheet focuses on construction industry stakeholders such as the new extended producer responsibility (EPR) or the product-material-waste assessment (PMW) system, which anticipates the future of a building.

Construction and Public Works Waste Cleanliness Waste Management

Building construction, renovation, or maintenance work can potentially pollute the air, water, and soil and generate waste. Oftentimes construction companies hire a dumpster rental company to discard all their unwanted construction debris and junk. This avoids illegal dumping.

This waste often has a financial impact over the lifetime of a building. The regulations governing construction site waste in California, on the fight against waste and the circular economy, have expanded producer responsibility (EPR), thus implementing the polluter-pays principle. This law and its implementing decrees include numerous reforms and innovations in the construction sector.

The Environmental Code defines waste as any substance or object, or more generally any movable property, which the holder discards or intends or is required to discard. It specifies that construction and demolition waste is waste produced by construction and demolition activities, including renovation activities, in the construction and public works sectors, including that produced by private households.

This requires local authorities to understand their assets by viewing them as a bank of materials. This requires new management practices. Local authority teams in places like Modesto, CA are encouraged to structure their knowledge of sites and develop useful tools for the design, construction, and upkeep of buildings.

Complex waste management regulations

There are a number of decrees created as subsections of the Environmental Code, specifically regarding extended producer responsibility. Some transposed the provisions of the Waste Management Directive into the regulatory sections of the Environmental Code and the General Code of Local Authorities (CGCT) on waste planning.

Another decree introduced an article of the Environmental Code, which includes new traceability and collection procedures. Its implementing decree introduces regulatory provisions to enable project owners to ensure the management of waste from their construction sites. it strengthens the traceability requirements for waste, excavated soil, and sediment. It transposes the provisions of the Waste Management Directive, amending another directive on waste, into the regulatory section of the Environmental Code.

It implements the traceability requirements for waste contaminated with persistent organic pollutants, pursuant to the article concerning persistent organic pollutants. Finally, it implements articles of the Construction and Housing Code (CCH) also supplemented by rules introducing constraints for waste tracking and incentives for waste recovery by stakeholders. It introduced the definition of construction products and materials for the building sector (PMCB) and established the list of producers subject to the EPR requirement. This definition and list have been codified in articles of the Environmental Code.

Application of the Waste Regulations

The project owner is required to comply with these new information and traceability obligations for construction waste, which came into effect in July 2022. Furthermore, waste traceability is subject to a separation of waste-related lines in quotes prepared by construction and gardening companies prior to the completion of work.

A deposit slip, specifying the origin, nature, and quantity of the waste collected, will be produced by the person in charge of waste collection; it is provided free of charge to the company that carried out the work. To implement these provisions, a decree created a new article within the regulatory section of the Environmental Code, which specifies that estimates must include:

• an estimate of the total quantity of waste generated by the work;
• the waste management and removal procedures planned by the construction company: sorting efforts made on the site; the type of waste for which separate collection is planned; where applicable, shredding of waste on the site, other technical provisions for gardening work;
• the collection points where the construction company plans to deposit waste from the site, based on its type, identified by: their company name, address, and type of facility;
• an estimate of the costs associated with the management and removal procedures for this waste.

The project owner is required to comply with these new information and traceability requirements for construction waste, which came into effect in July 2022, in order to improve waste management practices in the construction industry.