2018 Volume 72 Issue 1 Pages 352-358
A new environmental indicator, which considers resource recycling and CO2 emission, was proposed to evaluate the environmental impact of materials used for structures. We tried to evaluate the environmental impact of each type of cement used for construction of a bridge by both the proposed indicator and an existing method. The proposed indicator showed that Portland cement has a greater contribution to the environment than blended cements because it uses large amounts of difficultly recyclable resources（wastes）, while blended cements use large amounts of easily recyclable resources（by-products）. The integrated assessment results by the life-cycle impact assessment method based on endpoint modeling（LIME2）, which was adopted as an existing method in this study, also showed that Portland cement has a greater contribution to the environment. Therefore, the environmental indicator proposed in this study can easily provide environmental impact results consistent with LIME2 for structures.
