ABSTRACT
ABSTRACT Construction waste legislation in Germany requires a highly efficient reuse of material from the construction industry. Thus, construction waste with high-quality properties contributes to recycling opportunities and should be reused extensively to replace new material. The aim of this paper is to study whether it is possible to present the recycling potential in the construction sector, on building level or at product level, by means of parameters of life cycle assessment (LCA). The existing system of the Environmental Product Declaration (EPD) is used for this study. According to DIN EN 15978:2012 and DIN EN 15804:2014, the LCA information is structured in the lifecycle sections of buildings and the materials used therein. This specifies the exact time expected within the life cycle, as well as the extent to which certain effects can be quantified from the use of buildings or the building products. The LCA information is subdivided into the environmental impacts of the building, through to the completion of a building (module A), the environmental impacts during its use (module B), and the expenses at the end of the buildings life cycle (module C). An additional module D summarizes all benefits and loads outside the system boundaries. Module D declares the advantages or loads associated with raw material properties due to reuse, recovery, or recycling of a construction product. For this paper, a small building has been analysed by means of LCA and module D has nearly always shown negative values, which indicates benefits through recycling. Here, more detailed investigations have been conducted to show from which material fraction and, in which lifecycle stage, the benefits occur. The paper investigates the question of whether this module offers the possibility to present recycling potentials at the end of a building life cycle, or not.
