Abstract :
Most of existing construction processes are unconcerned with their environmental impacts through their life cycle. We must not expend our environment and recognize the critical situation of the Earth and develop technology to mitigate the impacts on the environment. Throughout their life cycle, buildings have important roles in energy and natural resources consumption; they have significant influences over the total emissions released causing global warming, ozone depletion problems etc. Massive activities of construction are globally noticed to accommodate the world urban population growth which is expected to reach 60% of the world population by 2030. Such a boom in construction must direct us to save resources from depletion.The aim of this paper is to mitigate the adverse environmental impacts related to construction processes and prevent the environment from symptoms of decay. The objective is to assess the impacts of different alternatives of building materials used as interior finishing based on their lifecycle assessment (LCA) using BEES software as an assessment tool. The materials investigated include some materials commonly used in residential and office buildings in Saudi Arabia: nylon carpet tiles, nylon carpet broadloom, wool carpet tiles, wool carpet broadloom and marble tiles. The impact inventory and analysis of the finishing material alternatives focuses on: Embodied energy, 2. Environmental flow and life cycle stages, 3. Summary of performance. In this case study, the embodied energy of marble tiles is the lowest of the alternatives, and is followed by nylon tiles carpet. While nylon carpet broad loom and wool carpets have much more amount of embodied energy. So, it is preferred to use marble or nylon tiles instead of wool carpet to reduce the energy used for production of finishing materials and the carbon footprint of the product as well. It is also noticed that broadloom carpets has more embodied energy than carpet tiles whatever the material types are. Environmental performance represents 50% of the overall performance as weighted in the evaluation setting at the first stage of running the BEES software. It is noticed that nylon tile carpets are the most environmentally friendly choices of the alternatives. Marble tile comes in the second place followed by nylon broadloom carpets. Wool broadloom carpets have the most adverse environmental impacts of the alternatives. In the economic performance, the results show that nylon broadloom carpet has the lowest cost or present value of the alternatives. Nylon tile comes in the second rank, and followed by nylon tiles with low volatile organic compound adhesive. Wool carpets have the highest cost of all the alternatives studied. Overall performance is evaluated based on equal weights for both environmental and economic performance. Nylon broadloom carpet has the best performance of the alternatives and it leads nylon tiles carpet by very small points. Then, nylon tile carpet with low volatile organic compound adhesives comes next followed by nylon broadloom carpet with low volatile organic compound adhesives. Marble tile performance is relatively high compared to the previous values. Wool carpets have the lowest overall performance and it was expected due to its low performance in both environmental and economic performance compared to other alternatives In this study, the economic performance of nylon carpet broadloom is the best compared to nylon carpet tile, marble tile and wool carpet. Marble tiles economic performance is much worse than nylon carpet and wool broadloom carpet as well. However, building owners in KSA might not care only about the economic analysis. They might prefer using marble tiles to get more prestigious look in their applications. Further BEES analyses indicate that the overall environmental performance of nylon tile and marble tile are much better during the 50-year life cycle because of their lower environmental impacts. Building owners caring about both economic and environmental performance of the materials may prefer to choose nylon tile or broadloom carpet without/with adhesives as finishing materials due to their better overall performance compared to marble tiles or wool carpets.
