Comparative LCA of wood waste management strategies generated from building construction activities

Abstract

The management of a large amount of wood waste generated from construction activities is a challenging issue. However, wood waste is an inherently renewable resource that can be recycled and utilized for the production of green products and renewable energy. In order to minimize the environmental impacts and to provide a scientific basis for the decision-making process on the wood waste management systems, a life cycle assessment (LCA) approach was employed in this study to evaluate the potential management systems from an environmental point of view. Three alternative scenarios, including the recycling and reusing of wood waste to produce organic polymer based particleboard, cement-bonded particleboard and energy were compared with the current disposal strategy (landfill disposal), with the functional unit of 1 tonne of wood waste within a cradle-to-grave system boundary. The LCA results showed that significant reductions of environmental impacts were observed for the production of particleboard (scenario 1) and wood-cement composite (scenario 2) from wood waste compared to that of using virgin wood. However, the results also showed that scenario 3 (energy generation from bio-fuel derived from wood waste) was the best strategy, as this technology reduces more than 1 tonne of CO2 eq greenhouse gases compared to the energy generation from coal. The analysis conducted in this study can serve as guidelines to design a sustainable and resource-efficient wood waste management system.