An overview of sustainability issues in manufacturing and building sector: a life cycle assessment approach

In the latest decades, the industrial consumption of materials and energy has undergone a growth which may exceed the limits of earth resources. Therefore, a strong awareness of the need to use materials and energy in a more efficient way has arisen. A wide research interest on sustainability is present in the modern technical literature: Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology and Design for Environment (DFE) procedures are nowadays widely investigated in many research labs all over the world. In this context, this paper focuses on LCA approaches in two main fields: manufacturing and building sector. As the former is regarded, sustainability issues are crucial topics and the reduction of environmental burdens for manufacturing processes is highly requested. As the latter is concerned, LCA allows to estimate the reduction of the operation energy and the increase of the embodied energy within the building life-cycle, and to understand whether the achieved energy benefits could be supported in a life cycle perspective or they were overcome by the environmental burdens of the actions.