Environmental impacts of construction material production

Abstract

Buildings are crucial to the development of a city and the well-being of its citizens. When designing a building facility, it is imperative to minimise the environmental burdens caused by buildings, particularly in terms of natural resource consumption as well as pollutants and waste generation due to the use of construction materials. Despite that, it is difficult for decision makers to ascertain the environmental impacts embedded in or emitted from new buildings, as there is no agreed upon approach to assess the environmental impacts of construction materials. In this paper, a midpoint life cycle impact assessment method is employed to assess the environmental impacts of construction materials. Four institutional buildings in Hong Kong that serve different social functions are examined. The type and the amount of materials used in those projects along with their environmental impacts are delineated. The results reveal that steel reinforcement, aluminium, copper, ceramic tile and concrete are the five most predominant materials in terms of environmental impacts in the selected institutional buildings in Hong Kong. With better insights about the environmental impacts of construction materials, clients and design team members can select suitable materials to realise a green building design.