Use phase of building is the largest stage that impacts environment during the life cycle, so require more attention in the field of energy saving of building. In the initial design stage of buildings, through LCA can help design decisions, such as the appropriate use of zero energy building techniques. To quantitatively assess the energy consumption and environmental impact among all above stages, LCA is undoubtedly the best choice that can full evaluate the impacts during extraction of raw materials, material creation, sale, maintenance, disposal or recycling, also global warming, air pollution, water pollution and other index. Thereby more effectively improving environmental performance is to achieve green building. LCA will provide the support of data on saving water, energy, material and other indicators. Based on LCA gradually promote the use of the Environment Product Declaration (EPD), this declaration will serve as a business and marketing communication product sustainability information, greatly enhance the green building(products) influence in the consumers. In today with increasing serious energy and environmental issues, using green building instead of traditional high-energy building has become a trend. Life cycle thinking and ways can facilitate the development of the green building process, and help us to make more environmentally friendly choices for building design and material selection, especially as consumers we need to follow.
LCA brings us many
The indefinite growth of the human population, has monumental impacts on the natural environment, not only in the UK, but around the globe. Architecturally, the entire process of designing and constructing a building, both domestic and not, can lead to the rapid exhaustion of natural resources across the planet. Building with environmental design strategies in mind not only combats the impact we as humans have on the natural environment, but also has considerable economic benefits, due to lower running costs of buildings and advanced occupant productivity. There are also many social benefits, such as improved air quality which resultantly leads too enhanced health of a buildings occupants.
The mission statement for EcoLiving is “To provide cost-effective, quality, and modern design and construction services while promoting greener living. Striving to advise and help our clients reduce their carbon footprint, along with our own, for the well being of our future generations.”
Today’s Designers, Architects and Constructors have a duty of care to strive to produce energy efficient and energy saving buildings. Where possible the sustainability of resources / materials and techniques must be a primary concern in the decision making process.
There are many ways that us humans can do to make a building more sustainable. Maybe we can just start with the little things, and in the near future when we have more advanced technology we can invent even greener inventions,but it all starts with you, together we can generate, create, and build our ideas and make the earth a healthier place for the 21st
Life cycle assessment addresses to all the three sustainability dimensions, environmental, economic, and social. LCA can track and document shifts in environmental impacts. Full characterization of product or process alternative helps decision makers or managers to make environmental trade off. Identification of environmental impacts in specific categories help Industrial decision makers analyze more specifically among different choices. LCA also can assess effects to one or more specific environmental areas at once.
With the goal to minimize the effects on the environment many companies have improved by using the LCA as a tool to consider the entire life cycle of a product (Curran 1996). LCA shows cumulative environmental impacts from all stages of the products life often including impacts not considered in more traditional analysis like raw material extraction or material transportation. This provides a comprehensive view of the true environmental tradeoffs of the product and process selection. Figure 1 illustrates the possible life cycle stages that can be considered in an LCA and the typical inputs/outputs
Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is used as a tool or technique to assess the environmental impacts of a product, process or activity throughout its life cycle from the cradle-to-grave analyses (extraction of raw materials through to processing, transport, use and disposal).
The company should design the equipments like computers, cooling system, servers, datacentre in such a manner that they serve environmental friendly and use less amount of energy,
Producing guidelines, standards and codes such as Building Code of Australia, Green Star ratings and Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) ratings for new building and refurbishment projects is a good method to encourage, identify and implement sustainability in construction. In the past, sustainable construction meant traditional approaches to construction was more complex and extensive and less profits in projects to adopt sustainability products and processes. Sustainable construction however should be seen although complex, incorporates aspects of economic efficiency, environmental performance and social responsibility with the aim to meet the needs of today without compromising future’s needs (Lafarge Holcim Foundation
The proposal addresses the problem of developing a sustainable agenda for innovative green environments, through investigating the application of aggregation processes into creative environmental, architectural approaches and sustainable
By undertaking an analysis an innovative, perceivably environmentally sustainable building (before analysis) through a Life Cycle Assessment, the author aims to scientifically investigate whether or not environmental sustainability is becoming more central to the design process, and if there are reasons to be optimistic.
We can apply advanced framing techniques in construction to prevent waste. This can helps use to reduce the cost of construction. The construction complies with the standard building codes and is highly energy efficient, which means they are affordable, easy to maintain and are extremely long lasting. (Advantages of Using Sustainable Building Materials, n.d.). Thus, it will helps to reduce maintenance cost of house. Besides that, with proper design for water and electrical flow to meet requirement sustainable criteria, we can increase the efficiency of that both utilities and reduce utilities cost. (Dick, 2014)
Inventory analysis is the data collection portion of a LCA and includes a quantified list of all inputs and outputs involving the entire life cycle of the concerned system. LCI involves estimating the energy and materials consumed by the system, the energy efficiency of the system’s components, and the emissions to air, land, and water by variant processes and components of the system. The process of data collection is the most time-consuming and resource-intensive step of the LCA. The reuse of data from other studies can simplify the work; however, assuring the data are representative is essential. LCI can be utilized to discover improvement opportunities and determine life cycle stages that present the most and least detrimental impacts [4].
L.E.E.D. stands for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design. Developed by the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC), this program is designed to inform and guide all kinds of professionals who work with structures to create or convert spaces to environmental sustainability. This includes architects, real estate professionals, facility managers, engineers, interior designers, landscape architects, construction managers, private sector executives and government officials. Proposals to modify the L.E.E.D. standards are offered and publicly reviewed by USGBC's member organizations, which number almost 20,000. From 1994 to 2006, L.E.E.D. grew from one standard for new construction to a comprehensive system of interrelated standards covering
As people known, to use renewable resource and to save energy or comfortable indoor environment is far from the overall picture. Because construction mentioned above is an industry which include many aspects such as land use and application of advanced technology, etc. Therefore if we want to define what is green building we should recognize the whole industrial chain included each aspects and unintended environment, social, economic, consequence brought possibly of complex activity. Kats (2003) in his article stated that the sustainable or green building should deal with those key points: environment, resource & energy consumption, impact on people, financial impact and the world at large which is a broader set of issues such as ground water recharge or global warming, as well governmental policies are typically concerned about (Kats, 2003, P. 1). And another institute, Office of the federal Environmental Executive (2003) defined green building as the practice of increasing the efficiency with which