Waste reduction through incentives: a case study

Environmental problems have been considered as a serious situation in Hong Kong, in which waste management is pressing harder in comparing with the practices of air, water and noise pollution. Reuse, recycling and reduce the construction materials has been encouraged for many years; however, it is still not used for many construction site activities. In motivating the construction workers to implement the reusing, recycling and reducing construction materials, reward scheme is used for measuring the results in the implementation and encouraging the practices of it. Furthermore, with the proposing landfill-charging scheme for the construction environment, contractors will push to reduce the waste generated by training and education. This paper examines the cost benefit for the organization, in which to encourage the workers by Stepwise Incentive System (SIS) for measuring the cost saving on purchasing material and waste generation. The procedures in the SIS will be provided. In order to verify the wastage reduction after adopting SIS, a local case study is undertaken. It proved that SIS can help reduce wastage generation up to 23.60%. Some difficulties and recommendations had also been suggested.