Advantages and disadvantages of on-site and off-site recycling.
When recycling is chosen as a form (or one of the forms) of waste management in a work, either new construction or demolition, it is necessary to determine whether such recycling will be carried out on-site or off-site.
Regarding on-site operations, recycling can be approached in two different ways: recycle or reuse the materials for their use on the site itself or recycle them for further sale or for their use on another site.
If possible, the best option is to reuse or recycle on and for the construction site itself, as it saves a lot of associated costs, both economic, time, and environmental.
Either way, on-site recycling operations aimed at the manufacture of new construction products can offer cost advantages and reduce transport needs, minimizing greenhouse gas emissions, avoiding traffic congestion, and generating less dust and noise pollution. In addition, it can facilitate on-site management and reduces the need for storage.
However, this way of carrying out the recycling process also has its disadvantages, such as the poor quality of the recycled products produced due to limited availability of cleaning facilities as well as the vulnerability to possible noise and dust pollution to residential areas nearby.
Overall, on-site construction and demolition waste recycling have great potential while the drawbacks cannot be neglected.
For its part, recycling off-site is the most common way of recycling. Its great advantage of that no equipment or machinery for this purpose is required to be installed on-site, leaving more free space for other purposes on the site, saving its additional costs, and facilitating the management of the other works.
But it needs more transportation (transportation of wastes to the recycling facility and transportation of the new good, instead of only the transportation of the new good), polluting much more, generating more traffic, and requiring to be coordinated with more intervening agents.
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