Comprehensive guideline for selecting building materials for a sustainable built environment: an approach through life cycle analysis

Abstract

A Life Cycle Costing (LCC) of building materials reduces the shortcomings of purchase decisions based on initial investment cost. However, this method too would not capture all adverse environmental impacts, which are difficult to be expressed in monetary terms, especially any harmful emissions during the life and the disposal stage of the material. A Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) instead could capture almost all adverse consequences throughout a Life Cycle (LC) of a material. But, the vagueness of the process of LCA with different approaches and complicated procedures applied to the concept has made the costing process through this approach unrealistic. This study was designed to investigate different approaches to LCA and present a common, user friendly framework that captures the environmental consequences in the selection of building. Secondary data of five building material LC’s and literature on the approaches to LCA were reviewed to investigate the components of life cycles. Field investigations were carried out simultaneously for contextual verifications of LC components and for the reliability of the data gathered through literature. The secondary data was coded and categorised to build a common framework. The study presents a compiled, user friendly guideline, that capture all possible costs on the end user as well as the environment that could guide in selecting any type of building material. The findings of the research will assist the building industry to maintain their social responsibility by selecting environmentally friendly building materials to avoid adverse environmental consequences, in order to ensure a sustainable built environment.