Rapid growth in construction activities as a result of a growing population and urbanization in many parts of the world generates a large amount of waste from construction. To reduce and manage these wastes, a comprehensive understanding of the construction waste generation factors is needed. The purpose of this study is to identify the contributing factors of construction waste in Thailand’s construction industry. The causes of construction waste were identified through an extensive literature review. A total of 28 causes of construction waste were identified and grouped into the four categories: design and documentation, material and procurement, construction method and planning, and human resources. To determine the significant level of each factor, a structured questionnaire survey was carried out to gather information from contractors about causes of construction material waste. The results show that the categories contributing to construction waste ranks as design and documentation, human resources, construction methods and planning, and material and procurement, respectively. Meanwhile, factors from each category were also determined and ranked. Design change, inattentive working attitudes and behaviors, ineffective planning and scheduling, and material storage were among the highest impact factors on construction waste generation in each category. Identifying the significance levels of waste generation factors will help the industry’s stakeholders build suitable strategies to manage construction waste more effectively.

The development of economy and society has resulted in an unstoppable and growing consumption of natural resources and the degradation of the environment. Social problems and environmental degradation are the result of these developments. Balancing social, environment and economic is the goal of sustainable development. Many countries have developed environmental assessment standards to support sustainable development concept. This paper presents a comparative study of nine (9) green building evaluation standards from both developed and developing countries to find similarities and differences in order to make future improvement on each standard to fulfill sustainable development concept. The comparison is done by reorganize criteria listed in those standards to match BREEAM evaluation criteria for ease of study. The study found that most building evaluation systems focuses mainly on environment and then economic while pay less attention on social side and most criteria gives higher emphasis to energy and environmental mitigation issues with "proactive" measures. The future development of evaluation standard, social impact need to be improved and minimization of building material use need to be preventive more than reactive management. "This paper is the revised version of the paper that has been published in the proceedings of the Creative Construction Conference 2018 (Luangcharoenrat and Intrachooto, 2018)."

Social problems and environmental degradation are the result of economic development in many parts of the world. Balancing social, environment and economic is the goal of sustainable development. Many countries have developed environmental assessment standards to support sustainable development concept. This paper presents a comparative study of green building evaluation standards in both developed and developing countries to find similarities and differences in order to make future improvement on each standard to full field sustainable development concept. The comparison is done by reorganize criteria listed in those standards to match BREEAM evaluation criteria for ease of study. The study found that most building evaluation systems focuses mainly on environment and then economic while pay less attention on social side and most criteria gives higher emphasis to energy and environmental mitigation issues with "proactive" measures. For the future development of evaluation standard, social impact need to be improved and minimization of building material use need to be preventive more than reactive management.

Many countries have developed environmental assessment rating standards for environmentally responsiblebuildings. This paper aims to compare the relative importance of issues included in these assessmentstandards, especially the rating standards developed by Thailand and members of the World Green BuildingCouncil. The study found that most building rating systems focuses mainly on the design phase and giveshigher emphasis to energy and environmental mitigation issues with “proactive” measures. On the contrary,emphasis on construction materials and resource management is minimal; and all of which are “reactive”measures.