The construction industry has considerable environmental impacts through the process of manufacturing building materials and building construction.Many environmental labelling programs have been introduced to the cons...The construction industry has considerable environmental impacts through the process of manufacturing building materials and building construction.Many environmental labelling programs have been introduced to the construction industry to measure the environmental impacts,including building up the environmental profiles for building materials.Although absolute measurements of the environmental impacts can be obtained by these labelling programs through detailed Life Cycle Assessment(LCA)studies,relative measurements should not be overlooked to indicate the gap between the current and the“leanest”performance.The term“lean”is often used to describe a process with less wastes,materials,human effort,time,etc.The lean concept originates from the Toyota Production System and has been applied in the automobile industry for decades.This paper therefore aims to investigate the applicability of a relative measurement of the environmental impacts for building materials by introducing the concept of“lean score”.The research aim is narrowed down by choosing the carbon labelling program and the precast concrete products as research objectives.The results indicate that a“lean”benchmark can be built to offer relative measurements of carbon emissions for precast concrete products.The lean score obtained from the benchmarking process provides the improving potential that can help the construction industry move towards sustainability.The results are also useful for regulatory bodies to establish national standards to measure the environmental impacts for building materials.展开更多
The construction industry is one of the major producers of municipal solid waste.Although there are many studies in municipal solid waste management,the research on the recovery of recyclable building material from co...The construction industry is one of the major producers of municipal solid waste.Although there are many studies in municipal solid waste management,the research on the recovery of recyclable building material from construction sites remains limited.This paper addresses the optimal design issue of the construction and demolition(C&D)waste logistics network based on the features of the construction industry from the contractors’perspective.The purpose of this paper is to provide an optimal C&D waste recycling network decision(RND)model considering the change of construction sites location over time.A multi-period and multi-objective mixed-integer linear programming model was developed to minimize the cost of C&D waste disposal for contractors,and to minimize the carbon emissions from C&D waste transportation.An application study was conducted to assess the performance of the RND model.Through some sensitivity analysis experiments based on an immune genetic algorithm,the influences of environmental policies and carbon tax policy on improving the recycling rate of C&D waste and reduce the carbon emission were explored.The findings of this research suggest that:(1)a RND model with the feature of the construction industry developed in this paper can effectively optimize the C&D waste logistics network;(2)government policies and laws are valid political instruments to improve the recycling rate of C&D waste;(3)the carbon-tax analyses demonstrate that a carbon tax policy can effectively reduce carbon emissions.展开更多
文摘The construction industry has considerable environmental impacts through the process of manufacturing building materials and building construction.Many environmental labelling programs have been introduced to the construction industry to measure the environmental impacts,including building up the environmental profiles for building materials.Although absolute measurements of the environmental impacts can be obtained by these labelling programs through detailed Life Cycle Assessment(LCA)studies,relative measurements should not be overlooked to indicate the gap between the current and the“leanest”performance.The term“lean”is often used to describe a process with less wastes,materials,human effort,time,etc.The lean concept originates from the Toyota Production System and has been applied in the automobile industry for decades.This paper therefore aims to investigate the applicability of a relative measurement of the environmental impacts for building materials by introducing the concept of“lean score”.The research aim is narrowed down by choosing the carbon labelling program and the precast concrete products as research objectives.The results indicate that a“lean”benchmark can be built to offer relative measurements of carbon emissions for precast concrete products.The lean score obtained from the benchmarking process provides the improving potential that can help the construction industry move towards sustainability.The results are also useful for regulatory bodies to establish national standards to measure the environmental impacts for building materials.
基金financial support provided by Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities-China(No.2018CDJSK03XK15)project support by the National Planning Office of Philosophy and Social Science Foundation of China-China(No.18BJY06).
文摘The construction industry is one of the major producers of municipal solid waste.Although there are many studies in municipal solid waste management,the research on the recovery of recyclable building material from construction sites remains limited.This paper addresses the optimal design issue of the construction and demolition(C&D)waste logistics network based on the features of the construction industry from the contractors’perspective.The purpose of this paper is to provide an optimal C&D waste recycling network decision(RND)model considering the change of construction sites location over time.A multi-period and multi-objective mixed-integer linear programming model was developed to minimize the cost of C&D waste disposal for contractors,and to minimize the carbon emissions from C&D waste transportation.An application study was conducted to assess the performance of the RND model.Through some sensitivity analysis experiments based on an immune genetic algorithm,the influences of environmental policies and carbon tax policy on improving the recycling rate of C&D waste and reduce the carbon emission were explored.The findings of this research suggest that:(1)a RND model with the feature of the construction industry developed in this paper can effectively optimize the C&D waste logistics network;(2)government policies and laws are valid political instruments to improve the recycling rate of C&D waste;(3)the carbon-tax analyses demonstrate that a carbon tax policy can effectively reduce carbon emissions.
