Abstract
Improving the sustainability performance of construction industry is driven by two forces: regulatory push (policy initiatives), and market pull where improving a corporate sustainability performance can be financially beneficial for enterprises. Through the investigation of the sustainability hotspots and impacts, concerning social and environmental, of the steel slag mixed concrete (green concrete) the study assessed the factors relevant for its performance and examined how to improve them. Hotspot analysis and impact assessments were conducted by social and environmental life cycle assessment (LCA). The assessed green concrete represented not just the variety of geographic representation but also the product designs (three different slag contents) and the potential difference occurring from the corporate efforts, where four classes were introduced. The investigation of the social and environmental hotspots of the green concrete revealed a difference in the relation between the sustainability performance and steel slags. While the increased slag content resulted in worse social performance, the increase improved the environmental performance in all six investigated case countries. This trade-off between the social and environmental performance implied the limits of the sustainable product design and suggested the effectiveness of the supply chain management for improving the two sustainability performances for the green concrete.
Highlights
Improving Sustainability Performance of Products for Better Financial PerformanceThe construction industry is a significant sector affecting our society: economically, socially [1] and environmentally [2,3,4,5]
Steel slag related inventories showed up as hotspots for human toxicity and photochemical ozone formation (PO) when the slag mixture was beyond 65% and became the hotspots for global warming potential (GWP), PO, and acidification when the mixture was over 80%
This study investigated the social and environmental hotspots and impacts of green concrete in six countries
Summary
Improving Sustainability Performance of Products for Better Financial PerformanceThe construction industry is a significant sector affecting our society: economically, socially [1] and environmentally [2,3,4,5]. The study from [9] showed the positive link between both the increase in the corporate social responsibility (CSR) strength and the reduction in the CSR concern, defined in Kinder Lydenburg Domini (KLD) Social Ratings Data, and the corporate financial performance. Former studies such as [10,11] support these findings that the companies with better CSR performance were associated with the higher return on equity (ROE), return on asset (ROA)
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