Page 130 - Materials Chemistry, Second Edition

126 6. Life cycle thinking for sustainable development in the building industry

of building materials and the impact of building environment in Japan. Based on the input-
output life cycle assessment (IOLCA) method, Chang et al. (2016) assessed the overall energy
consumption of China’s construction industry and the emission of environmental pollutants
such as CO 2 and NO x . He et al. (2013) evaluated the impact of China’s urban residential ma-
terialization environment in 2010 based on the LCA method, and used the scenario analysis
method to explore the environmental emissions of urban residential buildings in China
in 2020.

6.2 Life cycle of building materials

Based on previous studies, buildings may be classified as residential or nonresidential in
accordance with the Chinese statistical yearbooks (NBSC (National Bureau of Statistics of
China), 2001-2016). There are seven types of nonresidential buildings: office, education
and cultural, research, plant and warehouse, commercial, healthcare and medicine, and other
buildings. The key building material categories are identified as steel, concrete, cement (for
nonconcrete uses, i.e., plaster and mortar), wood, brick, sand (nonconcrete use), gravel
(nonconcrete use), limestone, glass, and ceramic tiles (Hong et al., 2016b; Huang et al., 2017a).
The whole life cycle of product is always a dynamic and comprehensive process. The life
cycle of a building includes the acquisition of raw materials, the processing and manufactur-
ing of building materials, the production of building components, the construction of build-
ings, the use of operations, and the entire process of demolition. As shown in Fig. 6.1.Asfor
the building materials, the main life cycle processes are acquisition and processing of raw
materials, processing of building components, and disposal after demolition.

6.3 Green building materials

The concept of “green materials” was first proposed by the international society for mate-
rials science in 1988. Yamamoto put forward the concept of “eco-environmental materials” in
1990 (Wang and Bao, 2015). In 1999, the first Chinese national green building materials

Raw material Material Component Building Use and
production manufacturing production construction maintenance

Demolition

Recycling

Landfill Incineration

FIG. 6.1 Life cycle processes of buildings.