Materials life cycle assessment of a living building

Abstract

Although life cycle assessment (LCA) is a valuable tool to evaluate the built environment's impacts, many recent studies do not allocate equal attention to each life cycle stage [1,2]. As use phase impacts decrease in high-performance buildings, the significance of other life cycle stages increases. A process-based material LCA was performed on a living building in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania to quantify impacts of other stages. The most impactful assembly was structural, ranging from 25-51% per TRACI category. Material improvements performed reduced carcinogen, non-carcinogen, and ecotoxicity impacts for structural (93%, 56%, and 18% respectively) and architectural materials (93%, 43%, and 13%, respectively).