Benchmarking carbon footprint and circularity in production processes: The case of stonewool and extruded polysterene

Abstract The use of construction and building materials is connected with important amounts of raw materials as well as energy inputs. Construction contributes to integrated building management an issue that has been analysed in several research works and projects. In order to quantify the environmental impact of a production process it is essential to create the inventory analysis of the raw materials used as well as the energy consume within the system studied. There are several environmental assessment tools developed to evaluate environmental impact in connection to economic effectiveness. The rising economic and environmental sustainability challenges which the construction sector faces as part of the competitive, globalized economy is the reason for evaluating the environmental criteria in the decision making process. In that sense, decarbonisation and circular economy support the European vision for sustainability and clean energy. The goal of this study is to benchmark carbon footprint in relation to the system’s boundaries. Indicators related to carbon emissions and different approaches based on system’s boundaries (including cradle to grave, cradle to site, cradle to gate) have been defined and introduced. Moreover, carbon footprint indicators as well as circularity indicators were calculated for insulation materials’ production process. . Also, efforts to shift towards a circular economy are made under real conditions, comparing the closed loops to linear flows for the two production processes. Finally, the recycling scenario is compared to the linear flow, demonstrating the relevance of carbon indicators. One of the key findings of the research is that circular economy can be expand in two directions: (a) on a single material or process level, one has to establish the availability of reliable data that will enable the study from cradle to grave since there is a huge variety of building materials and elements that can be found (b) on a bigger scale, one has to consider whole systems. In both cases a number of parameters such as energy use, raw materials input, and operational cost can be affected and improved.