ABSTRACT
This paper presents the study of the environmental assessment of construction and demolition waste (C&DW) production using life cycle assessment (LCA). In the LCA framework, the phases of life cycle corresponding to primary production is in general not considered. Therefore, the process of C&DW primary production was investigated in this study. The data were collected from a demolition site of a building to make LCIs for this case study. A “data collection form” was defined as regards energy and water consumption, CO2 emissions and wastes production, the main relevant flux for building owners. Then environmental impact indicators were determined using mid-point method. The results show that the major contributor to all the impacts categories calculated is due to “Materials from demolition and asbestos removal”, followed by “building site machineries” and “incoming”. Another important result is that the transportation impacts of materials from demolition are small compared to their treatment. At least a sensitivity study was carried out in order to determine the environmental gain that would represent the halving of unsorted rubbles, by making them recyclable (for example by better sorting). The results lead to a reduction of 3 to 13% of the total impact.
