Selecting Materials for Environmental-Friendly Buildings: The Need for Improved Environmental Impact Data
Abstract: Buildings of the
future need to be more environmental-friendly. Selecting environmentally-benign
materials in design stage would partly help achieving such goal. Examination of
existing environmental impact data of building materials reveals that the data differ
greatly from one source to another. Comparisons of environmental impact values
of selected materials are presented. The sources that give rise to data
variation are identified and discussed. The applicability of existing data is
assessed from the designers’ perspective. Limitations of current practice in
data acquisition and presentation are also discussed. It is concluded that
existing environmental impact data of building materials are inconsistent and
perplexing to designers. An alternative approach to data acquisition and
presentation is to break the life cycle of building materials into several
phases and to calculate the total impact value as the sum of the impacts of all
phases. This would make the determination of the full life cycle value feasible
and increase external validity of research results.
Author: Nachawit T
Journal Code: jptsipilgg120021
