ENVIRONMENTAL AND ENERGY PERFORMANCES OF BUILDING PRODUCTS: A WORKING CHAIN BASED ANALYSIS

The present work is aimed at investigating the environmental and energy performances of products to be utilized in buildings. Specifically, marble (Section 1), granite (Section 2) and natural materials (Section 3) will be analyzed. The marble features are here studied on the basis of a field working chain audit. Particularly, two representative firms of the Custonaci productive basin (Trapani) have been considered. Their working chain have been investigated, by the point of view of the energy and materials flows, with a classical Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) approach. Moreover, the social and economic impacts of such materials have also been assessed by means of the Life Cycle Costing (LCC) and Social Life Cycle Assessment (S-LCA) approaches. By the way, the here presented S-LCA study represents one of the few presently available in the literature. The granite has been analyzed by an energy and materials point of view, in the aim of singling out the possibility of reducing the amount of energy involved in the productive process along with the potentiality for reusing the waste materials resulting from the present working chain. The study refers to Spanish firms, due to the period that the author spent in this country, thanks to a PhD fellowship granted by the University of Palermo. The possibility of utilizing natural materials, like hay and hemp, has been finally investigated by means of an experimental approach. The studies was conducted in the laboratory for indoor and building materials currently operating within the Department DEIM of the University of Palermo.