Reinforcing bars (rebar), which have the most embodied carbon dioxide (CO2) per unit weight in built environments, generate a significant amount of cutting waste during the construction phase. Excessive cutting waste not only increases the construction cost but also contributes to a significant amount of CO2 emissions. The objective of this paper is to propose a special-length-priority cutting waste minimization (CWM) algorithm for rebar, for sustainable construction. In the proposed algorithms, the minimization method by special and stock lengths was applied. The minimization by special length was performed first, and then the combination by stock length was performed for the remaining rebar. As a result of verifying the proposed algorithms through a case application, it was confirmed that the quantity of rebar was reduced by 6.04% compared with the actual quantity used. In the case building, a CO2 emissions reduction of 406.6 ton-CO2 and a cost savings of USD 119,306 were confirmed. When the results of this paper are applied in practice, they will be used as a tool for sustainable construction management as well as for construction cost reduction.

Rebar, the core resource of reinforced concrete structures, generates more carbon dioxide per unit weight than any other construction resource. Therefore, reducing rebar cutting wastes greatly contributes to the reduction of greenhouse gas (GHG). Over the past decades, many studies have been conducted to minimize cutting wastes, and various optimization algorithms have been proposed. However, the reality is that about 3 to 5% of cutting wastes are still generated. In this paper, the trends in the research on cutting waste minimization (CWM) of rebar for sustainable work are reviewed in a systematic method with meta-analysis. So far, the literature related to cutting waste minimization or optimization of rebar published has been identified, screened, and selected for eligibility by Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses, and the final 52 records have been included in quantitative and qualitative syntheses. Review by meta-analysis was conducted on selected literatures, and the results were discussed. The findings identified after reviewing the literature are: (1) many studies have performed optimization for the market length, making it difficult to realize near-zero cutting wastes; (2) to achieve near-zero cutting wastes, rebars must be matched to a specific length by partially adjusting the lap splice position (LSP); (3) CWM is not a one-dimensional problem but an n-dimensional cutting stock problem when considering several rebar combination conditions; and (4) CWM should be dealt with in terms of sustainable value chain management in terms of GHG contributions.