The Environmental Impact of Reusing Post-Earthquake Demolition Waste: İskenderun Case Study

Abstract

Producing recycled aggregate from construction and demolition waste generated by earthquakes and using it as raw material in concrete production would be effective for urgent waste management after disasters and to reduce the environmental impact of concrete production by decreasing resource use. In this study, the life cycle assessment (LCA) method was used to examine the environmental implications of concrete produced using recycled aggregates (RA) derived from construction and demolition waste (CDW) of buildings demolished after the earthquake that struck Iskenderun and was centered in Kahramanmaraş. In addition, the environmental consequences of an equal volume of concrete produced in the same location utilizing natural aggregates (NA) were assessed. For the LCA of these two types of concrete, openLCA software and the ReCiPe midpoint database were used. LCA was conducted considering terrestrial ecotoxicity, climate change, terrestrial acidification, photochemical oxidant formation, marine ecotoxicity, human toxicity, freshwater ecotoxicity, ozone depletion, particulate matter formation, marine eutrophication, and ionizing radiation impact factors. The results show that cement has the highest impact on the environment by far.