Highlights
- Wood material reuse and recycling can reduce greenhouse gas emissions by over 50% through deconstruction.
- Deconstruction boosts jobs, community ties, education, and cultural preservation, showcasing its broad societal benefits.
- Economic outcomes vary due to labor, disposal costs, and salvage values, presenting mixed financial feasibility for deconstruction.
- Key challenges—labor intensity, technical barriers, policy constraints, and wood quality—demand innovation and policy refinement.
Abstract
Although existing literature extensively explores recycling and reuse in construction and demolition waste, there is a notable gap in research specifically focused on wood waste circulation through design for deconstruction (DfD). This paper presents a comprehensive literature review, examining 41 studies to explore three major aspects of wood waste circulation: its environmental, economic, and social impacts; the reuse of deconstructed wood materials; and the challenges and recommendations for future wood waste circulation through DfD. The review reveals a more than 50% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions through wood material reuse and recycling, highlighting the significant environmental benefits of deconstruction and material recovery across various regions and scenarios. The social impacts include job creation, community engagement, educational opportunities, and cultural preservation, further demonstrating the holistic benefits of deconstruction. The economic impacts are mixed due to varying labor, disposal costs, and salvage values. Identified research gaps include labor intensity, economic, technical and social barriers, policy constraints, and quality issues of reclaimed wood. The paper concludes with recommendations for future research, emphasizing the need for policy refinement, innovative deconstruction techniques, interdisciplinary collaboration network, and market expansion strategies to enhance the adoption of sustainable construction practices in the wood industry.
Introduction
Wood waste management has become a critical issue in the construction industry due to its significant environmental impact, particularly the contribution to landfill overflows and increased greenhouse gas emissions. Analysis reveals that wood/timber constitutes a significant portion of construction and demolition (C&D) waste, as evidenced by studies in New Zealand where timber accounts for 38% of C&D waste (Zaman et al., 2018), around 40% in USA (Bakchan and Faust, 2019), 30%–50% in Canada (Yeheyis et al., 2013), 10%–25% in European Union countries (Bergsdal et al., 2007; Caro et al., 2024), 4–5% in south Africa (Berge and Blottnitz, 2022) and 8%–20% in China (Li et al., 2013; Wang et al., 2022).
Traditional methods of wood waste disposal are unsustainable (Daian and Ozarska, 2009; Hossain and Poon, 2018), highlighting the urgent need for innovative and sustainable solutions (Finch et al., 2021). Design for Deconstruction (DfD) emerges as a promising approach to address these challenges by facilitating the reuse and recycling of wood materials (O’Grady et al., 2021). DfD is a design methodology that integrates sustainability principles into the foundation of the design process (Eckelman et al., 2018), focusing on the cost-effectiveness and feasibility of reusing and recycling building components from the outset (Tingley and Davison, 2011). By ensuring high quality and durability in construction, DfD offers a viable solution for reducing C&D waste, thereby minimizing greenhouse gas emissions during the end-of-life phase of buildings (Zaman et al., 2018). It helps preserve valuable wood components such as lumber, doors, and windows, allowing them to be repurposed in new construction (Falk, 2002).
Despite the clear potential of DfD, the current recycling rates for wood materials at the end of their life cycle remain disappointingly low (Daian and Ozarska, 2009), which hinders the construction industry’s progress toward true circularity (van Oorschot et al., 2023). Key challenges include the lack of infrastructure and advanced technology for efficient wood recycling, as many construction wood products are contaminated with materials like nails, adhesives, and coatings that complicate the recycling process (Faraca et al., 2019; Ormondroyd et al., 2016). Furthermore, the economic landscape poses additional barriers; the high costs associated with collecting, sorting, and processing wood waste often outweigh the market value of recycled wood, making it less economically attractive compared to virgin wood (Nguyen et al., 2023).
Considering the above comments generated from practice and research of wood waste emerged with the concept and adoption of DfD, in order to better understand and summarize the current exploration in this area, a literature review of the publications is very necessary. While the recycling and reuse of construction and demolition waste are widely discussed within the context of a circular economy (Blengini and Garbarino, 2010; Chen et al., 2023), the specific focus on wood waste and DfD remains underrepresented. This review aims to fill that gap by exploring three major aspects of wood waste circulation through deconstruction: its environmental, economic, and social impacts; the reuse potential of deconstructed wood materials; and the challenges and recommendations for advancing DfD in the wood industry. Through this analysis, the review seeks to provide a deeper understanding of how wood waste circulation through DfD can contribute to more sustainable construction practices and drive the building industry toward greater circularity.
Section snippets
Method
The paper aims to explore the impact and benefits of wood waste circulation through DfD. A three-step approach was used to map and discuss the main findings. First, systematic literature review (SLR) is adopted instead of simple review. Second, the overview of the selected articles is explored with bibliometric analysis. Last, detailed discussion of the adoption of DfD for wood waste and possible impacts are explored through integrative analysis. The challenges and potential future directions
Type of the papers
Among all the selected papers, four are review papers. The details of papers categorized as “review” type are summarized in Table 2. Among them, two papers are more related to circular construction with a focus on timber construction and connections. The other paper analyzed the embodied GHG of wooden buildings through 266 different scenarios using life cycle assessment (LCA) method and found that the reported embodied GHG of wooden buildings are one-third to half of those reported from
Integrated analysis results
Among all the selected papers, three clusters are identified by the content of the articles as shown in Fig. 5. 22 articles focus primarily on wood waste or wood material reuse/recycling through DfD (Cluster 1), 10 papers discuss recycled or reused wood products through DfD (Cluster 2), and the remaining 9 provide a general introduction to deconstruction with wood being one of the generated wastes (Cluster 3). Therefore, the following analysis and discussions will be based on these three
Conclusion
Although recycling and reuse in the context of construction and demolition waste have garnered substantial attention in recent literature, the specific focus on wood waste and DfD remains underexplored. This literature review has examined three major aspects of wood waste circulation through deconstruction: its environmental, economic, and social impacts; the reuse potential of deconstructed wood materials; and the associated challenges and recommendations. Through an integrative analysis of 41
Credit authorship contribution statement
Shiyao Zhu: Writing – original draft, Visualization, Software, Resources, Methodology, Investigation, Conceptualization. Haibo Feng: Writing – review & editing, Validation, Supervision.
Declaration of competing interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.
Acknowledgement
The authors gratefully acknowledge the funding and support provided by Forestry Innovation Investment (FII) of Canada (24/25-UBC-ECR-W25-042).
