Civil Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
the preservation of raw material and the energy stored in the material. The main
options for designers are:
•
Reuse
Designates the subsequent usage of complete durable building products;
design for reuse implies that joints between components and materials must
enable easy dismantling for further reuse or replacement.
•
Recycle
Designates the recovery of raw materials, in whole or in parts, for the
new production of the same materials when their re-use is not possible.
The reuse of building components is site-specific and time-dependent and
requires acceptance that the design and construction process may need to change
(Gorgolewski
2008
).
The most important measure in facilitating future recycling efforts is to use
recyclable materials, to avoid materials that contaminate each other, and to avoid
construction designs that are difficult to disassemble (Thormark
2002
).
Landfill should be considered only if subsequent usage is impossible. In fact,
this form of waste treatment involves high costs and high land consumption.
2.2.3.1 Life Cycle Assessment Methodology
The LCA methodology is internationally standardised (ISO 14040—
Environmental management—Life cycle assessment—Principles and framework)
and recognized as the most effective and the only holistic tool to measure envi-
ronmental impacts. LCA is important to sustainable design of buildings because
it takes into account a range of environmental impact indicators, such as embod-
ied energy and global-warming potential, and facilitates impartial comparisons of
materials, assemblies and entire buildings (Sartori and Hestnes
2007
). It is true
that LCA of entire buildings has mainly been performed by researchers and few
professionals in the building sector and its most common building-related applica-
tion is the comparison of the environmental impacts of different building materials
(Cabeza et al.
2014
; Bribián et al.
2011
), but it is equally true that the demand for
LCA is expected to increase. Moreover, its application in the building sector is par-
ticularly difficult, due to the intrinsic complexity of the building itself (Li
2006
):
the variety of products it is made of, the many impacts it generates during its life
cycle, the length of its life and the difficulty to forecast its use and maintenance
during its service life and disposal or reuse opportunities after more than 50 years.
As pointed out in the Sect.
2.1.2
, the different stages of a building's life cycle
are handled by different stakeholders with disjointed, short-term and incomplete
links to each other. Different models and approaches have been developed and car-
ried out, in the two last decades, by several researchers to cope with this com-
plexity and the literature review shows that there are still different opened critical
issues for the identification of a valid methodology (Peuportier
2001
; Malmqvist
et al.
2011
). The main problem that always arises from these experiences is the
lack of inventory data or their poor reliability to give clear and doubtful results.
In fact, although a large amount of data is available worldwide, their use needs
