Life Cycle Sustainability Assessment

Summary of the workshop

The workshop presenters covered various topics and use cases on environmental and social life cycle assessment for construction products and buildings.

• The IMMEC project showed various potential future strategies for PVC product recycling, with estimated environmental impacts as well as avoided ones, to facilitate the transition to a more circular waste management from the construction of built elements.
• The CIRCUSTAIN offered a complementary view on PVC from a social LCA perspective, with impacts reflected on labour across the impact pathways, adopting an integrated LCSA approach.
• The MIRACLE project showcased the environmental impacts of novel built components designed for radiative cooling, as well as its performance at building level, to facilitate mitigation of impacts (embedded as well as operational energy) and heat-island effect mitigation.
• The ASIRE project continued with the building scope for the environmental friendly renovation of older buildings, while tackling energy poverty via a life cycle costing methodology.
• Finally, the REGEN project presented the challenges to assess urban level interventions on the built environment, their environmental impacts and potential social benefits.

Key takeaways

• The workshop had a lively open discussion with the panel of presenters, over around 35 minutes, with several questions on the methodologies employed, their limitations and replicability on different use cases.
• The audience was interested in the social methods to gauge social impacts, as well as the technical implications.
• The limitations of data collection and scope definition across the various use cases were presented, especially the data collection methods for social impacts estimation
• Other questions were related to the end of life data, ways to better estimate impacts in a circular economy context

Contributing projects:

• IMMEC
• CIRCUSTAIN
• REGEN
• CHIASMUS
• MIRACLE
• ASIRE

Speakers:

Calin Boje, Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology – Antonino Marvuglia, Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology – Thomas Schaubroeck, Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology – Thomas Gibon, Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology – Nick Adams, KU Leuven | Architectural Engineering – Els Van de Moortel, KU Leuven | Architectural Engineering