Water footprint and life cycle assessment of concrete roof tile and brick products at PT. XYZ

Abstract

PT. XYZ is an Indonesian company engaged in manufacturing concrete roof tile and paving block. The company has not paid attention to the environmental and human health aspects of their production activity, where there is so much water used and discarded during the production process and no water treatment for the wastewater produced. Therefore this topic proposed in order to determine the resulting impacts from the production processes of concrete roof tile and brick at PT. XYZ on the environment and human health. The impact on the environment and human health were identified through water footprint assessment (WFA) and life cycle assessment (LCA). Through the WFA accounting, it is known that the amount of water needed to produce a concrete roof tile is 21.384 L which consists of 16.433 L blue water and 4.951 L grey water, whereas for a brick is 10.496 L which consists of 10.48 L blue water and 0.016 L grey water. With ReCiPe midpoint (H) method, it is known that the dominant impact categories generated in one batch production processes of concrete roof tile and brick are natural land transformation, marine eco-toxicity, freshwater eutrophication, and freshwater eco-toxicity, where those impact categories represent the average of 75.5% from overall impact category for concrete roof tile and brick products.