نبذة مختصرة : Construction and demolition waste (CDW) can be defined as a mixture of surplus materials generated from construction, renovation and demolition activities, including site cleaning, road works and demolition (Shen et al., 2004). Inadequate management of CDW, affects the environment, the economy and society (Jin et al. 2019). Besides increasing construction costs and real estate prices, CDW can have major negative impacts on the environment (Borja et al., 2019), namely the contamination of soil and watercourses with heavy metals that can cause diseases in the population and wild animals. These negative impacts are of major importance in sensitive natural environments, justifying the relevance of this research in the city of Manaus, in the central Amazon, Brazil. A previous study involved the quantification of CDW produced at 4 construction sites in the city of Manaus, and the costs involved in its management and disposal (Oliveira et al., 2019). The results showed that high quantities of wood and paper waste are produced, with considerable disposal costs, in spite of the high potential to recycle and re-use these types of waste. Metal waste was found to be the only CDW that was being adequately recycled in the construction sites under study, showing the importance of the implementation of an organized system to collect and recycle CDW in the city of Manaus (Oliveira et al., 2019). A similar case study conducted in the city of Santiago, capital of Chile, led to a quantification of the CDW volume for further management improvement proposals (Bravo et al., 2019). According to this study, in Santiago the generated volume of CDW per building area is 0.186 m3/m2, with a management cost of 75.47 US$/m3 (Bravo et al., 2019). These values are of the same magnitude as the ones found in the research study conducted in Manaus (Oliveira et al., 2019). Ogunmakinde et al. (2019) describe CDW management in Nigeria, highlighting the existing corruption and unethical practices of large companies who prefer to dig and bury the CDW in clandestine landfills, refusing to comply with environmental laws to avoid loss of profits. This lack of social and environmental responsibility in construction companies is unfortunately also a reality in Brazil. However, surveillance and monitoring of CDW production and disposal may not be the solution to combat clandestine landfill, as demonstrated in the study of Tsiliyannis et al. (2019), conducted in Athens, Greece. Environmental education and good practice are the best weapons we have in environmental management, and adequate CDW management requires a change in the behavior and attitude of each citizen (Mak et al., 2019). The studies conducted in the present investigation sought to define the current model of CDW management in the construction sites of the city of Manaus, its advantages and disadvantages, in order to verify the possibility of implementing a Circular Economy system (Farooque et al., 2019). This system could result in cost savings in civil construction and in the reduction of negative environmental impacts caused by the illegal disposal in clandestine landfills, which harms the lives of the citizens of the city of Manaus and the surrounding environment, the Amazon rainforest itself. Circular Economy CDW management systems have already been implemented in European cities (Fratini et al., 2019; Kravchenko et al., 2019), so why not extend this practice to cities in Latin America, which are also affected by the environmental and financial impacts of inadequate waste management on urban construction sites. In order to implement a Circular Economy model, construction companies must be adequately involved in this system, for example through the promotion of sharing and renting equipment, customers access and involvement, or the redesign of a product in order to make it more durable and easier to reassemble if repair is needed (Kravchenko et al., 2019). Scientific initiatives to develop new materials using CDW raw materials are very important for the sustainability of CDW management, such as ultra-high performance concrete (UHPC) which uses a fraction of waste together with natural sand (Wang et al., 2019). Technological developments are of the utmost importance in the process of improving environmental management in a Circular Economy model: digital networks and robotics are increasingly inserted in the context of environmental management, accompanying the development of the new “Industry 4.0” in the manufacturing sector (Sarc et al., 2019). Although the Circular Economy model is not yet implemented in Brazil, good practice initiatives are encouraged, as the one described in this paper regarding CDW waste management in constructions sites in the city of Manaus through the use of start-up technologies like mobile applications. These have an exponentially growing market worldwide, demonstrated by the increasing use of mobile applications running on smartphones, tablets, laptops and other mobile devices (Kaur & Kaur, 2019). The main objective of this research is to enhance adequate environmental management in construction sites through the development of a mobile application for CDW management. This tool can be used by construction companies, waste disposal companies, and even urban citizens who need to dispose construction waste.
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