Abstract
Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) was developed to
determine the holistic environmental impact of a product or service or
activity or process to inform useful alternatives with fewer
environmental impacts. The built environment is one of the largest
sectors in any community, and buildings are one of the primary
products of the built environment. Since buildings comprise of six
life cycle stages; these phases significantly contribute to the
environmental impacts of building construction and when in use. The
objective of this paper is to determine the level of awareness and
usage of LCA in the building sector and how LCA methodology can
assist to achieve sustainable building practices in the built
environment. The study was conducted with reference to existing
theoretical literature, published and unpublished research. The study
is mainly a literature review on LCA, its features, applications
benefits and barriers regarding the building sector. Literature studied,
revealed that LCA is not significantly utilized in the construction
industry, particularly in the construction stage because most
contracting companies are not aware of it, and where they are aware,
there is resist to adopt the methodology. Also, the significant barriers
to building experts who are aware of the method are that the method
is termed complicated, time-consuming and costly. However, LCA
when adopted in the construction environment, will assist to achieve
sustainable building practices because its systems perspective avoids
problem shifting from one life cycle stage to another. Also, since
LCA procedure investigates a broad range of environmental impacts
associated with industrial products such as Climate Change,
Acidification, Ozone Depletion and Human toxicity. LCA, therefore,
informs producer decisions about alternative processes in their
attempt to improve industrial environmental performance.