Cradle-to-gate life cycle assessment of interior floor material alternatives in Egypt

Abstract

AbstractThe building materials sector has a major environmental impact and is one of the main causes of environmental degradation in the construction industry. An Environmental Impact Assessment of several interior floor material options, such as ceramic, marble, and parquet tiles, is conducted in this study using a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology. Due to the shortage of LCA applications in Egypt and the unavailability of the inventory database for the materials industries, the study uses a case study of a new city in Egypt to assess the environmental effects of various floor materials. The LCA approach uses SimaPro software V9.50 and its integrated Ecoinvent database V3.0 to define the objective and scope, conduct an inventory analysis, evaluate the impact, and interpret the results. According to the LCA findings, ceramic tiles, followed by marble tiles and parquet tiles, have the lowest negative environmental impacts. Regarding the singles score, results (midpoint method) have revealed that the marble tiles have hit the highest adverse environmental impacts by 2.24 pt, followed by parquet by 1.21 pt, and finally, the ceramic tiles by 0.594 pt. The global warming potential of ceramic tiles is 0.539 kg CO2, which is less than 74% of the global warming potential of marble tiles (2.01 kg CO2). The non-renewable energy impact of the marble tiles is (38.70 Mj primary), which is higher by 78% of the non-renewable energy of ceramic (8.46 Mj primary). Finally, the human health impact has recorded the highest numbers in the marble industry by 1.12E−5 DALY, which means the marble industry needs a high amount of energy. Ultimately, the findings of this study can potentially improve the sustainability and energy efficiency of construction projects by assisting decision-makers in selecting and applying environmentally friendly building materials.