Abstract
This PRISMA-guided scoping review examines the use of waste materials in civil engineering as a sustainable approach to reducing environmental impacts, conserving natural resources, and supporting circular economy principles. The rapid growth of urbanization, industrialization, mining, and agricultural activities generates large amounts of waste materials, including fly ash, ground granulated blast-furnace slag, bauxite residue, mining tailings, waste rock, acid-mine drainage sludge, waste plastics, post-consumer vulcanized rubber, recycled construction materials, and agricultural ashes. The disposal of these materials often creates serious environmental and land-use problems, making their reuse increasingly important. In this context, civil engineering is one of the most promising sectors for large-scale waste valorization because of its high material demand and its ability to use different waste streams into practical applications such as concrete and cementitious systems, pavement and asphalt engineering, geotechnical works, and other infrastructure sectors. This review critically evaluates the global availability, material characteristics, engineering applications, environmental and economic benefits, recent advances, and key challenges related to major industrial, mining, agricultural, polymeric, and construction-derived wastes. Although significant progress has been made in this field, wider implementation is still limited by variations in material properties, technical and environmental challenges, economic constraints, and limited field validation of long-term performance. By bringing together current knowledge from different waste streams and civil engineering sectors, this review highlights important research gaps and future directions to support more sustainable, resilient, and resource-efficient infrastructure development. The effective use of waste materials in civil engineering can play an important role in reducing carbon emissions, improving resource efficiency, and supporting global sustainability.
Keywords
bauxite residue, carbon emissions, circular economy, fly ash, road pavement, sustainable materials, tailing, waste materials
Document Type
Journal Article
Date of Publication
7-1-2026
Article Number
3154
E-ISSN
19961944
Volume
19
Issue
14
Publication Title
Materials
Publisher
MDPI
School
School of Engineering
RAS ID
100028
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Recommended Citation
Dassanayake, C., Mashaan, N. S., & Galagedara, R. (2026). Waste material utilization in civil engineering applications: Advances, challenges, and future directions—A scoping review. Materials, 19(14), 3154. https://doi.org/10.3390/ma19143154