Analysis of Major Environmental Impact Categories of Road Construction Materials
1
Department of Architectural Engineering, Kangwon National University, Samcheok 25913, Korea
2
GREENers, Ansan 15455, Korea
3
School of Architecture, Kumoh National Institute of Technology, Gumi 39177, Korea
4
Department of Civil Engineering, Kangwon National University, Samcheok 25913, Korea
*
Authors to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Sustainability 2020, 12(17), 6951; https://doi.org/10.3390/su12176951
Received: 20 July 2020 / Revised: 18 August 2020 / Accepted: 20 August 2020 / Published: 2 September 2020
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sustainability and Industry 4.0 in Civil and Infrastructure Engineering)
To address the environmental problems associated with construction materials, the construction industry has made considerable efforts to reduce carbon emissions. However, construction materials cause several other environmental problems in addition to carbon emissions and thus, a comprehensive analysis of environmental impact categories is required. This study aims to determine the major environmental impact categories for each construction material in production stage using the life cycle assessment (LCA) technique on road projects. Through the review of life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) methodologies, the abiotic depletion potential (ADP), ozone depletion potential, photochemical oxidant creation potential, acidification potential, eutrophication potential, eco-toxicity potential, human toxicity potential, as well as the global warming potential (GWP) were defined as impact categories. To define the impact categories for road construction materials, major environmental pollutants were analyzed for a number of road projects, and impact categories for 13 major construction materials were selected as mandatory impact categories. These materials contributed more than 80% to the impact categories from an LCA perspective. The impact categories to which each material contributed more than 99% were proposed as specialization impact categories to provide basic data for use in the LCIA of future road projects.
View Full-Text
Keywords:
construction materials; major environmental impact categories; life cycle assessment; road project
▼
Show Figures
Figure 1
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited
MDPI and ACS Style
Park, W.-J.; Kim, R.; Roh, S.; Ban, H. Analysis of Major Environmental Impact Categories of Road Construction Materials. Sustainability 2020, 12, 6951. https://doi.org/10.3390/su12176951
AMA Style
Park W-J, Kim R, Roh S, Ban H. Analysis of Major Environmental Impact Categories of Road Construction Materials. Sustainability. 2020; 12(17):6951. https://doi.org/10.3390/su12176951
Chicago/Turabian StylePark, Won-Jun, Rakhyun Kim, Seungjun Roh, and Hoki Ban. 2020. "Analysis of Major Environmental Impact Categories of Road Construction Materials" Sustainability 12, no. 17: 6951. https://doi.org/10.3390/su12176951
Find Other Styles
Note that from the first issue of 2016, MDPI journals use article numbers instead of page numbers. See further details here.
