Environmentally Sustainable Construction Products and Materials : Assessment of release and emissions

The main objectives of sustainable construction activities are to avoid resource depletion of energy, water,and raw materials and to prevent environmental degradation caused by facilities and infrastructurethroughout their life cycle. The construction sector consumes yearly about half of all natural resourcesextracted in Europe and their transformation into building products has huge energy demands. Thereforethe focus of today’s environmental policy is on the building end-of-life scenarios and material efficiency.Here waste prevention and recycling / reuse play a key role by providing huge energy, water and materialsavings. These issues are also specifically addressed in the Construction Products Regulation (CPR2011), where health and safety aspects related to use of construction products cover the entire lifecycle.Meanwhile the building sector is moving from new buildings towards maintenance and renovation. Thistrend will probably further increase by the energy conservation activities that will be required to achievethe 20-20-20 goals outlined by EC resulting in a need of renovation of a huge amount of buildings. Untiltoday hardly any construction product is designed keeping recycling/reuse in mind, the “Design for theEnvironment” -concept is one of the key steps towards increased recycling and reuse and thereby towardsminimal environmental impacts. This project has been carried out by VTT with cooperation with the Danishpartners SBi, DTU and DHI and the Swedish partners SGI and IVL.

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