Environmental evaluation of thermal insulation materials by life cycle assesment methodology

Buildings and construction materials used in buildings contribute to negative environmental impacts during their life cycles. These environmental impacts caused by buildings should be evaluated for producing environmental sensitive buildings. Life cycle assessment (LCA) is a methodology used for assessing the environmental performance of materials or services over their life time. The aim of this study is to present whether the expanded polystrene (EPS) or stone wool, having great importance in energy conservation and widely used in the buildings, are more environmental during their cradle to gate stage. Environmental impacts of insulation materials were evaluated by GaBi 4 software tool. Finally, the environmental impacts of EPS were found to be less than the stone wool for all analyzed environmental impacts categories. Moreover, it was shown that environmental effects were resulted mainly from manufacturing stage. This study emphasized the importance of environmental criteria on the selection of building materials.