Citation:

Niblick, B., W. Ingwersen, P. Jain, J. Smith, T. Townsend, A. Edelen, AND D. Meyer. Modeling end-of-life pathways of construction and demolition debris in the United States (poster for LCM 2017). 8th International Conference on Life Cycle Management (LCM 2017), Luxembourg CityL, September 03 - 06, 2017.

Impact/Purpose:

This poster will be presented at the 8th International Conference on Life Cycle Management (LCM 2017) in Luxembourg City, Luxembourg, held on September 3-6, 2017. The presentation will educate international participants on life cycle modeling of recycling and disposal pathways for construction and demolition debris (CDD) in the United States. New, previously unavailable data will be presented and successful inventory modeling methods will be discussed. The LCM conference audience typically consists of international government institutions, members of industry, academic researchers, and other life cycle assessment practitioners.

Description:

In 2013, the United States generated 530 million tons of construction and demolition debris (CDD), 90% of which was related to demolition. Despite this major contribution to national waste streams, Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) studies and product declarations of buildings and building products have traditionally excluded end-of-life (EOL) pathways or used proxy data instead. Excluding the EOL phase may lead to incomplete life cycle results and can potentially result in misleading conclusions. The United States Environmental Protection Agency (U.S. EPA) has developed EOL life cycle inventories (LCIs) for several CDD materials, including concrete, asphalt pavement mix, asphalt roofing shingles, land clearing debris, treated and untreated wood, and gypsum drywall. Various scenarios and pathway mixes have been modeled and include disposal, recycling, and reuse practices commonly found in the United States. While these LCIs have been modeled for a U.S. context, similar methods could be applied for CDD practices around the world. As new CDD datasets are developed at the U.S. EPA and externally reviewed, they will be uploaded to the Federal LCA Commons (www.lcacommons.gov) for public use, free of charge. Once downloaded by users, the LCIs can be adapted to fit individual research needs, and eventually, resubmitted to the LCA Commons to enable continual open-source LCI development. This LCA data effort represents one of the first times EOL data of CDD materials and pathways in the U.S. have been systematically documented and made available in accessible data formats. These data can be used to inform LCA studies in the CDD sector as well as support sustainable community-based decision-making. The views expressed in this abstract are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the views or policies of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Record Details: