Authors
Bendahmane, Nada
Abstract
Considering the increase of natural resource use and the finite nature of Earth, humanity is facing the problem of resource depletion. The building sector is a major consumer of resources; in France, the construction of a detached house consumes on average 1.2 t/m² and the construction of a multifamily housing consumes on average 1.6 t/m². The most consumed resources are the mineral resources with a percentage of 96% [Ademe, 2019]. Thereby, the optimisation of mineral resource use in the building sector is a necessity. The resource depletion problem has been widely discussed in the scientific community in the past couple of decades, and many LCIA methods has been developed. Nevertheless, the LCIA methods related to mineral resources represent some limits when applied in the building sector context [E. Gully; S. Laurenceau, 2019]. Some of the limits identified are: (i) the very heavy materials such as aggregates that are very abundant at the global scale are not well considered in the impact characterisation; (ii) the evaluation is relative which allows choosing a product/service instead of another considering their environmental score, but does not allow knowing if a service/product is sustainable. This research work aims to analyse in an absolute approach a set of LCIA methods regarding the characterisation factors they propose by comparing the mineral inventory flows from a case study from the building sector and the mineral flows for which the LCIA methods proposes characterisation factors.