Exploring the Missing Link between Life Cycle Assessment and Circularity Assessment in the Built Environment

The built environment—with its significant environmental impact and long lifespan—is a key sector in which to implement circular economy principles. So far, however, a coherent framework with circularity indicators has not yet been established. While Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is commonly practiced...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Buildings (Basel) 2022-12, Vol.12 (12), p.2152
Main Authors: Lam, Wai Chung, Claes, Steven, Ritzen, Michiel
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Building construction
Built environment
Case studies
Circular economy
Circularity
circularity assessment
Construction industry
Consumption
Decision analysis
Decision making
Environmental impact
Environmental indicators
External walls
Life cycle analysis
Life Cycle Assessment
Life cycles
Life span
linking indicators
Performance evaluation
Urban environments
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Summary:The built environment—with its significant environmental impact and long lifespan—is a key sector in which to implement circular economy principles. So far, however, a coherent framework with circularity indicators has not yet been established. While Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is commonly practiced to quantify the total environmental impact, it is designed and intended to assess linear life cycles, making it unsuitable for circularity assessment. Thus this paper explores an objective method to link LCA to a semi-quantified circularity indicator. Four variants of external wall designs of two case studies are analyzed. The explored possibilities of linking LCA results or mass input flows to the circularity indicator show differences in outcome. Furthermore, the analysis shows that decision-making can be affected by choice of assessing only a circularity indicator, an environmental impact indicator, or mass input flows, as opposed to a scenario in which a linked approach of these parameters is applied.
ISSN:2075-5309
2075-5309
DOI:10.3390/buildings12122152