An integrated life cycle inventory for demolition processes in the context of life cycle sustainability assessment

According to the Life Cycle Assessment in Building and Construction: State-of-the-Art Report (2003), the dismantling and demolition stage of the building life cycle is only sometimes included in the Life Cycle Inventory (LCI) when doing Life Cycle Assessments (LCA). The reason that it is less inventoried in a traditional LCA maybe because this stage is expected to have a negligible environmental impact comparing to other stages in the life cycle of the buildings.

When doing a life cycle sustainability assessment considering not only environmental but also economic and social impacts, the impacts of the labor-intensive dismantling and demolition stage may not be possible to disregard anymore, due to the related process costs, health and safety of workers and the influence on the quality of the demolition materials, determining their suitability for high grade recycling.

Currently, LCIs of dismantling and demolition processes are rare and reflect only the impacts to the environment and do not include data on economic and social impacts. The present study gives case specific environmental, economic and social LCI data for two demolition processes.