In "Built to Last: Measuring the Life Cycle of a Facility", Sarah Fister Gale explores the tools and methods used in life cycle assessment (LCA), a holistic approach to new building construction. For the Greener Buildings article, she writes:
"Defining the carbon footprint of a building is an elusive and complex process. Unlike individual products that have well-defined shelf lives and finite ingredients, buildings stand for decades, endure climatic extremes and will be used for multiple purposes.Every decision that goes into the design, material choice and energy use in a building has a long-term effect. "Buildings are the most long-lived products we make," says Tom Gloria, chief knowledge officer for eQuilibrium Solutions Corporation, a sustainable management services company in Boston.
Their longevity makes getting an accurate life cycle assessment (LCA) complicated. LCA is a method of holistically evaluating the environmental impact of a product throughout its life cycle, from the harvesting of raw materials through processing, manufacture, installation, use, and ultimately disposal or recycling or the entire envelope."
Better understanding of a building's life cycle, in fact, is an area gaining greater attention lately. The Lifecycle Building Challenge, which launched last year, just issued a call for entries for its second competition, LBC2: "Submit your innovative project, design, or idea for reducing to conserve construction and demolition materials and reduce greenhouse gas emissions by designing buildings for adaptability and disassembly."
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