Life cycle assessment of construction and demolition waste management in a large area of São Paulo State, Brazil

The study evaluated the environmental performance of the construction and demolition waste (C&DW) management in the area of PCJ Watershed, located in the São Paulo State, Brazil, by means of an attributional Life Cycle Assessment. The entire C&DW management under the responsibility of the municipal government was considered. The potential environmental impacts were assessed by using two specific life cycle impact assessment methodologies, CML baseline (v3.03) and Impact 2002+ (v2.12). The results obtained by both methodologies highlighted the importance of the avoided impacts from recovered materials, mainly those related to steel, glass and plastics recycling. In particular, the CML baseline indicated “Human Toxicity” as the most important category, mainly due to the avoided impacts from steel recycling and the generated impacts from transportation in all the C&DW management stages. The Impact 2002+ highlighted instead the role of the categories of “Respiratory Inorganics” and “Global Warming” in accordance with the results related again to steel recycling and transportation but also to landfilling of solid residues. The study considered some alternative scenarios of the mineral fraction management, which quantified the expected advantages of increasing C&DW recycling and improving the quality of recycled aggregates.