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Buildings
Special Issues
Circular Pathways and Zero-Waste Practices in Sustainable Construction
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Circular Pathways and Zero-Waste Practices in Sustainable Construction

A Special Issue of Buildings (ISSN 2075-5309) belonging to the section "Construction Management, and Computers & Digitization".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 31 December 2026 | Viewed by 641

Editors

Dr. Benjamin Kwaku Ababio

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
School of Built Environment, Massey University, Auckland 0632, New Zealand
Interests: construction management; circular construction; sustainable project delivery; behavioral economics; digital transformation
Dr. Prince Antwi-Afari

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
School of Architecture and Civil Engineering, The University of Adelaide, Adelaide, SA 5005, Australia
Interests: circular digital design; construction waste management; sustainable circular cities; design for circularity; application of artificial intelligence for construction waste minimization
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Dr. Xichen Chen

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
School of Future Environments, Auckland University of Technology, Auckland 1010, New Zealand
Interests: digital construction; construction informatics; construction engineering and management; construction project management
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

The construction industry remains one of the world’s most resource-intensive sectors, generating substantial waste across its design, operations, and supply chain activities. As sustainability imperatives intensify globally, transitioning to circular pathways and zero-waste practices has become an urgent priority for governments, industries, and researchers alike. Encouraging this transition has been evident over the past few years through major international policy initiatives, including the EU’s Circular Economy Action Plan, China’s circular economy priority in its 15th Five-Year Plan, and Australia’s National Waste Policy. However, systemic adoption across construction practices remains deeply insufficient, demanding rigorous scholarly attention.

For this Special Issue, we seek innovative research that advances circular and zero-waste paradigms across the full construction lifecycle. We invite submissions exploring procurement strategies that enable closed-loop material flows, zero-waste site practices including but not limited to reduce/reuse/recycling/recovery, circular supply chains, reverse logistics, take-back schemes, and operational resource efficiency. Further topics include digital enablers, circular business models, decarbonization approaches, low-waste and offsite construction methodologies, and adoption landscape across diverse institutional and regulatory contexts. High quality empirical, conceptual and review studies are welcome. Through this Special Issue, we aim to provide academics and practitioners with deeper insights into how circular pathways and zero-waste practices can be meaningfully embedded into sustainable construction.

Dr. Benjamin Kwaku Ababio
Dr. Prince Antwi-Afari
Dr. Xichen Chen
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-anonymized peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Buildings is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • circular economy
  • circular construction
  • construction industry
  • construction practices
  • zero-waste policy
  • supply chain circularity
  • circular procurement management
  • sustainable built environment
  • construction waste management

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Published Papers (1 paper)

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Review

25 pages, 3489 KB  
Review
Circularity and Reuse Readiness in Sustainable and Affordable Modular Housing: A Systematic Scoping Review
by Yan Arianto, Mochamad Agung Wibowo and Syafrudin Syafrudin
Buildings 2026, 16(17), 3559; https://doi.org/10.3390/buildings16173559 - 7 Sep 2026
Viewed by 304
Abstract
The growing demand for sustainable and affordable housing requires construction systems that reduce material consumption, embodied environmental impacts, construction waste, and life-cycle costs while retaining the value of building components across multiple use cycles. This study presents a systematic scoping review and evidence [...] Read more.
The growing demand for sustainable and affordable housing requires construction systems that reduce material consumption, embodied environmental impacts, construction waste, and life-cycle costs while retaining the value of building components across multiple use cycles. This study presents a systematic scoping review and evidence map of circular economy strategies and reuse readiness in modular sustainable and affordable housing. A structured literature search covering publications from 2016 to 2026 identified 283 records, of which 49 studies were included following screening and eligibility assessment. The included studies were coded according to circular economy strategies within the 0R–10R framework, building life-cycle stages, modular technology typologies, sustainability and affordability indicators, and reuse-readiness attributes. The evidence map shows that the literature remains predominantly focused on life-cycle assessment, carbon emissions, waste reduction, reuse, and recycling. In contrast, early-stage circular strategies, including refuse, rethink, reduce, and redesign, as well as repair, refurbishment, remanufacturing, social value, life-cycle affordability, and operational reuse readiness, remain insufficiently examined. The findings further demonstrate that prefabrication or modularity alone does not ensure circularity. High reuse readiness depends on demountable connections, non-destructive disassembly, component standardization, durability, repairability, material traceability, reverse logistics, and credible second-life scenarios. Based on the mapped evidence, this study develops an evidence-informed Integrated Digital Circular Modular Ecosystem pathway that connects circular design, material passports, reuse-readiness assessment, BIM and digital twins, component grading, reverse logistics, circular marketplaces, and life-cycle performance evaluation. By integrating reuse readiness, life-cycle affordability, and digital traceability within a single evidence-informed pathway, the study provides a structured basis for researchers, policymakers, and industry stakeholders to evaluate and advance modular housing beyond construction efficiency toward long-term circularity and component value retention. As a conceptual synthesis, the pathway requires further validation through expert assessment and application to actual modular housing projects. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Circular Pathways and Zero-Waste Practices in Sustainable Construction)
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