Environmental Impacts of Building Materials

2. Environmental Impacts of Building
Materials
•Buildings are large entities and, as such, they
impact upon the environment in various ways.
Present-day designs clearly consume large
quantities of physical resources such as
materials, energy and money in their
construction, maintenance and use; but they
also can result in effects such as loss of
amenity and biodiversity which are much more
difficult to assess.

3. • If we are going to build in ecologically-sustainable
manner, or even substantially reduce the
environmental impacts of current building
approaches and practices, it will be necessary to
consider the impact of a building over its full life-
cycle analysis.
• The life-cycle of a building material can be
considered to have five stages:
• -mining/extraction/harvesting
• - manufacture
• - construction
• - use
• - demolition

5. • For most building materials, the major
environmental impacts occur during the first two
stages but as waste-disposal problems increase,
we are also being made increasingly aware of the
impacts associated with the demolition stage.
• Some indicative results are as follows:
• Walls-
Timber Frame, Plasterboard 7.2
Steel Frame, Plasterboard 7.4
AAC Blocks - rendered 20.6
Clay Bricks - rendered 49.1

6. • FLOORS
Timber, Brick Piers, Footings 41.9
Concrete Raft Slab 74.4
• ROOFS
Timber Frame, Corrugated Steel 5.2
Timber Frame, Terracotta Tile 20.6
• High numbers indicate greater environmental
impact; lower numbers indicate lesser impact