Life cycle stages.

Life cycle stages.

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The building industry is responsible for a large proportion of anthropogenic environmental impacts. Circular economy (CE) is a restorative and regenerative industrial economic approach that promotes resource efficiency to reduce waste and environmental burdens. Transitioning from a linear approach to a CE within the building industry will be a sign...

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Context 1
... et al. consider that if the material is, after all, reused after its initial use, the building in which the material is reused should be rewarded with the environmental sav- ings resulting from the avoided processing and manufac- turing of virgin materials. As it is not always clear from previous case studies how environmental crediting of reuse/recycling is actually conducted (Allacker et al., 2014;Aye et al., 2012), EN 15978 (2012) states that benefits from reuse, recovery and recycling (module D in Table 1) should always be reported separately for reliable decision support. According to Allacker et al. (2014), an improvement in the product system model- ling could potentially be to accommodate the average number of times a material or element is recycled or reused, e.g. using the principles in the ILCD handbook. ...
Context 2
... that quantifies the environmental impacts that can be attributed to the product system ( Hauschild et al., 2018) in accordance with the DGNB certification system (Green Building Council Denmark, 2014). Table 1 shows the life cycle stages as defined in EN 15978. It also shows which modules are included in the DGNB certification system. ...
Context 3
... D (Next product system) in Table 1 acknowl- edges the design for reuse and recycling concept, and quantifies the net environmental benefit or loads result- ing from reuse, recycling and energy recovery beyond the conventional system boundaries (EN, 15978, 2012). However, using equation (2) means that credits for reus- ing the building elements are not directly reported separ- ately in the Next product system as stated by EN 15978, since the life cycle impacts as well as credits of each reu- sable element are split between the respective use cycles that will share them. ...

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