Sustainability Measures for MSE Walls and Baseline Environmental Impact Evaluations

Abstract

Over the past few decades, greater emphasis has been placed on environmentally responsible ("green") engineering and development of more sustainable products, structures and systems. Although Mechanically Stabilized Earth (MSE) walls are inherently more sustainable than many retaining wall systems, little has been done to evaluate or further increase the sustainability of the basic MSE wall concept. This paper describes a life cycle assessment (LCA) study that was performed to establish a baseline for the environmental impact of MSE walls from the "cradle" to dismantling and recycling the wall. This study consisted of identifying the goal and scope, performing an inventory analysis, assessing the impact and interpreting the results. The assessed impact categories are energy consumption, abiotic depletion, climate change, photo-oxidant formation and acidification. For comparison purposes, the environmental impact of a gravity wall is also evaluated using similar methods developed from the LCA study.