Sustainable concrete in Asia: Approaches and barriers considering regional context

Asia is home to a diversity of socio-economic and environmental conditions which directly affect concrete-related manufacturing and construction. The implementation of sustainable concrete in Asian countries is thus highly dependent on their regional conditions, but the regional context of sustainable concrete needs to be understood in order to connect generalized strategies with actual implementation. This paper summarizes the results and key findings from previous qualitative investigations carried out in Japan, Thailand, S. Korea, Mongolia, and Singapore, and compares the approaches and barriers to sustainable concrete in order to extract regional issues and their relationship with sustainable concrete. The results highlight the importance of institutional systems, economic factors, resource availability and recycling, geography and climate, technology level, stakeholder roles and relations, and social factors when considering the implementation of strategies for sustainable concrete in Asia. (C) 2013 Published by Elsevier Ltd.