Australia’s construction and demolition industry produces enormous amounts of waste, commonly due to errors or inadequacies in contractual, design, management, material handling and storage, operation and procurement processes. This undoubtedly has significant influence over environmental, social and economic realms. Thus, it is critical to implement effective construction and demolition waste management (ECDWM) strategies, practices and systems with a high degree of efficiency and impact in order to reduce the overall generation of construction and demolition waste (CDW). This requires involvement from both governments and construction stakeholders. 

Therefore, this study conducts a systematic literature review (SLR) to ultimately recommend to Australia ECDWM strategies, practices and systems employed by overseas countries such as Switzerland, Hong Kong, Germany and the United Kingdom (UK). These countries have been successful in delivering a more sustainable economy, directing less waste to landfills and achieving an 80%-90% CDW recovery rate. In the SLR, a four-stage framework involving database selection, preliminary literature search, literature selection and content analysis were followed, narrowing results to 46 publications. The review synthesised and analysed existing studies to establish, evaluate and recommend overseas effectiveness construction and demolition waste management (ECDWM) measures that can be employed in the Australian context. 

Some of these recommendations include; using advanced technologies and BIM throughout all project phases, aligning regulations across the different states and territories, mandating certain practices (e.g. the monitoring, reporting and tracing of CDW through audits and site waste management plans (SWMPs), educating staff on the significance of waste and sustainability, establishing a market for secondary products and expanding on extended producer responsibility. These strategies, practices and systems are advised in view of ECDWM barriers, some which include the lack of; education on ECDWM, established markets for reusable and recycled construction products, demand for secondary building materials, adequate legal frameworks, standardised collection methods and others.