Abstract
There six life cycle stages of buildings are: raw
material extraction; manufacturing; construction;
operation and maintenance; demolition; and disposal,
reuse or recycling. The life cycle stages of a building are
all intensively involved, in that the use of natural
resources, energy and water are consumed in each of
them. This paper investigate the environmental impacts
across each of these stages. Furthermore, the paper also
highlight the role the building sector on the total global
environmental impacts in terms of the building sector’s
contribution to waste generation, pollution, amongst
others. This is done in order to encourage and to inform
ways which can be incorporated into the building sector
in order to reduce their impact on the environment. The
study is conducted with reference to existing theoretical
literature, published and unpublished research. The
study is mainly a literature review/survey on the life cycle
stages of a building. The key findings from the study are
that energy is consumed across all the stages of a
building. Environmental impact such as greenhouse gas
emissions, waste generation and pollution etc. associated
with a building are declared to be of a great quantity due
to many and relatively long life cycle stages a building
have. This study is valuable to the South African built
environment, construction industry, infrastructure
development and/or sustainable urban development.