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Life Cycle Assessment(LCA) of Sustainable Building Materials

A special issue of Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050). This special issue belongs to the section "Green Building".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 31 December 2026 | Viewed by 790

Special Issue Editors


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Guest Editor
Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Interests: LCA; bio-based materials; dynamic modeling; building stock; carbon; CO2; circular economy; carbonation; BIM; artificial intelligence
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

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Guest Editor
Department of Architecture Built Environment and Construction engineering (ABC), Politecnico di Milano, 20133 Milan, Italy
Interests: LCA; bio-based materials; dynamic modeling; building stock; carbon; CO2; circular economy; carbonation; BIM
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

The Special Issue, titled “Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of Sustainable Building Materials”, focuses on the environmental, economic, and social impacts of building materials in relation to their life cycle. This Issue highlights the importance of sustainability in construction, emphasizing the need for innovative materials that enhance durability, improve functionality, and align with principles of circular economy, low carbon, and regeneration. 

It aims to explore various life cycle approaches and methodologies to assess the environmental burden of materials—from extraction to disposal—including potential trade-offs between social and economic aspects, ensuring a comprehensive evaluation of their sustainability. 

In this Special Issue, we welcome original research articles and reviews. Research areas may include (but are not limited to) the following: 

  1. Materials developed within the context of the circular economy (reuse, recycling, etc.).
  2. Bio-based and non-conventional materials (e.g., bio-cementitious materials, bioplastics, geopolymers, earth-based materials, etc.).
  3. Study of environmental product declarations (EPD) of building materials.
  4. New methodological approaches (e.g., dynamic LCA, biogenic carbon, and carbonation modeling) and tools for evaluating sustainable building materials (e.g., BIM, material passports, MFA, AI, etc.).
  5. Eco-efficiency indicators for the evaluation of building materials.
  6. Sustainable materials for retrofit and heritage preservation.
  7. Sustainable materials for pavements and infrastructure.

We look forward to receiving your contributions.

Prof. Dr. Lucas Rosse Caldas
Prof. Dr. Francesco Pittau
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sustainability is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • LCA
  • recycled materials
  • reused materials
  • bio-based materials
  • low-carbon materials
  • performance analysis
  • innovative approaches

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Published Papers (1 paper)

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Research

28 pages, 2602 KB  
Article
Comparative Life Cycle Assessment of Elastomeric Bitumen and Polymer Modified Bitumen Emulsion for Waterproofing Systems Based on Primary Data
by Jhony Raniery, Fábio de Oliveira Braga, Daiane Cecchin and Lucas Rosse Caldas
Sustainability 2026, 18(6), 2936; https://doi.org/10.3390/su18062936 - 17 Mar 2026
Viewed by 420
Abstract
Increasing attention to environmental performance in construction materials has intensified the need for robust Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) studies on bituminous waterproofing systems. This study addresses the lack of comparative LCAs based on primary data for hot-applied Elastomeric Modified Bitumen (EMB) and cold-applied [...] Read more.
Increasing attention to environmental performance in construction materials has intensified the need for robust Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) studies on bituminous waterproofing systems. This study addresses the lack of comparative LCAs based on primary data for hot-applied Elastomeric Modified Bitumen (EMB) and cold-applied Bitumen Emulsion (EMBE), two widely used materials with contrasting application methods and environmental profiles. While EMB has been moderately covered in the literature, this study contributes uniquely by providing one of the first LCAs based on primary data for EMBE, a formulation that is increasingly adopted in the construction sector but still underexplored in environmental assessments. The primary industrial data were combined with international LCI datasets (Ecoinvent) to model environmental impacts using SimaPro 9.4.0.3. Results show that EMBE demonstrates better climate performance (611 kg CO2 eq/t) but is more sensitive to specific additives, especially resins and plasticizers, which significantly increase Ozone Depletion Potential and photochemical ozone formation. The Environmental Product Declaration (EPD) survey analysis further highlights the influence of recycled content, cold mix technologies, and production energy sources on environmental performance. The findings indicate that the selection of waterproofing materials should consider not only technical performance but also the distribution of environmental impacts across the life cycle. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Life Cycle Assessment(LCA) of Sustainable Building Materials)
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