Circular Build
Profiting from demolition waste in Malaysia’s urban core
Kuala Lumpur is demolishing and rebuilding at a furious pace—and the rubble is piling up. If current habits persist, construction-and-demolition (C&D) waste will jump 21 % by 2025 compared with 2016 volumes, straining landfills already forecast to hit capacity by 2050. That looming squeeze is flipping waste from a disposal cost into a recoverable revenue stream for contractors who design circular pathways from day one.
Market drivers: landfill costs up, circular mandates rising
RM50 / t tipping fees. Sending debris to a conventional landfill in Malaysia now averages about RM50 per tonne—and the rate climbs each budget cycle.
CIDB circular-economy playbook. A 2024 CIDB white paper urges builders to “treat waste as asset,” embedding material-reuse targets into upcoming procurement guidelines.
MyCREST & GBI credits. Both rating tools reward projects that divert ≥50 % of structural waste, translating to faster green-loan approvals and interest-rate rebates.
Bottom line: every tonne you reroute from landfill boosts margins and ESG scores at once.
Malaysian pilots proving the math
Bukit Bintang Retrofit 2025. A 28-storey hotel strip-out separated crushed concrete on-site, trucking it to a Klang recycler for conversion into 20 mm recycled aggregate. The developer saved RM18 / t over virgin stone and cut embodied carbon 25 %.
Eco City Deconstruction Hub. DBKL’s pilot “urban quarry” stockpiles reclaimed brick and steel from three sites, selling processed materials to nearby infrastructure works. Net profit after transport and sorting hit RM1.2 million in twelve months, driven by avoided tipping fees and scrap-steel sales.
Profit math in one minute
Avoided disposal: 10 000 t × RM50/t tipping = RM500 k saved.
Sale of recycled aggregate: 7 000 t @ RM28/t market rate = RM196 k revenue.
Processing costs: Crushing & screening ≈ RM18/t = RM126 k.
Net swing: ≈ RM570 k improvement versus landfilling the lot.
Those figures exclude the softer wins—faster local authority approvals and MyCREST points that trim financing costs.
Five-point circular playbook for PMs
Design for deconstruction. Specify bolted rather than welded steel connections so beams exit whole, ready for resale.
Segregate at source. Mobile crushers and labelled skips on Level 1 raise concrete recovery to >90 % and slash haulage trips.
Lock recyclers early. Secure processing capacity during tender; Klang Valley facilities often book out months ahead.
Track with QR tags. Simple QR stickers on waste skips feed weight tickets straight into a Power BI dashboard—proof for MyCREST auditors.
Share gains. Offer subcontractors a 30 % rebate on avoided tipping fees; skin-in-the-game keeps sorting discipline high.
Global glimpse: Asia-Pacific recycled aggregate boom
Regional demand for recycled aggregates hit USD 2.1 billion in 2024 and is growing at 10 % CAGR—a market Malaysia can tap with reliable, graded outputs. Developers eyeing exports to CBAM-regulated EU projects will soon need that provenance anyway.
Pitfalls still burying value
Mixed skips. One bucket of gypsum rubble in a concrete load can kill the resale.
Permitting lag. Crushing plants inside city limits need DoE noise and dust clearances—file at least six weeks out.
Short-term lens. Treating recycling as “extra work” rather than line-item business leaves money on the ground.
Share this brief with your demolition and QS teams—waste is cash, and the clock on cheap landfill space is ticking.