Loading...
Empowering women in low-income communities in Colombia by extracting values from construction and demolition waste through recycling concrete
Styer, Jaime
Styer, Jaime
Citations
Altmetric:
Advisor
Editor
Date
Date Issued
2023
Date Submitted
Collections
Research Projects
Organizational Units
Journal Issue
Embargo Expires
2024-11-29
Abstract
While the construction industry is an important source of income for many countries and essential to dealing with population growth and urban expansion, it is contributing to many environmental and social issues. Due to its observed contributions to pollution, carbon dioxide emissions, energy consumption, natural resource depletion, and waste generation globally, the construction sector is a well-known major contributor to environmental degradation. Although many countries are developing strategies to manage construction and demolition waste (C&DW), oftentimes, these strategies are limited to final disposal policies which ignore the potential positive impacts utilizing this waste could have on environmental, social, cultural, economic, and political levels (Mendez-Fajardo, 2011). In Latin America, significant advances in managing C&DW have been lacking. Colombia is one such country that is generating massive amounts of C&DW yet has not made significant advances in managing it until very recently. When developing solutions to treat and manage C&DW, as some groups are disproportionately exposed to and affected by adverse environmental effects due to social and economic factors, such as gender, class, race, etc., special consideration should be given to those more vulnerable to the effects of environmental degradation.
Utilizing a participatory, mixed methods—primarily qualitative—approach to work with women in a low-income community in Colombia to understand how value can be extracted from C&DW safely, determine how these recycled materials can be made useful, and how to do all this in a way that enhances social cohesion in their communities, this investigation aims to connect C&DW management, empowerment, and sustainable community development by utilizing a participatory, community-based workshop. Overall, this study demonstrates the importance of using community-based participatory research and mixed methods approaches to understand how empowerment is contextually situated to ensure projects are truly empowering to the groups they intend to serve.
Associated Publications
Rights
Copyright of the original work is retained by the author.