Country: Bulgaria
Category: Smart City
Project aim: Green ReStart is a company dedicated to improving the quality of construction by assessment and mitigation of the environmental burden of construction products and processes. While measures for energy efficiency during the operation period of the buildings are widely incented and accomplished, the overall environmental profiling of buildings and building products is yet to be developed. We started our company with the desire to help the establishment of the holistic and smart management of construction materials and works.
What is your project about?
Green ReStart provides product life cycle assessment (LCA) services for the manufacturers of construction materials. LCA allows for a detailed overview of the magnitude and sources of environmental problems with respect to established environmental impact categories. On the one hand, LCA helps identifying the key activities and processes with major environmental impacts and, on the other hand, LCA can distinguish the areas where these impacts occur.
Which is your objective?
Our goal is to develop the standard LCA methodology into a tool that takes into consideration the geographical location of the process under study. This is to provide more accurate, realistic and reliable information on the environmental footprint of buildings and construction products.
The LCA results can serve as a basis for type III environmental product declarations (EPDs). Very few products are issued such EPD but there is increased interest of investors and buildings end users for sustainable and intelligent habitats. BIM modelling and design is facilitating the cooperation between different professionals and also allows for a life-long management and maintenance of the buildings. Environmental data for construction products can be successfully integrated into the BIM model, thus allowing the designers and users to better calculate and analyze the parameters of the project.
Various life cycle assessment techniques can be useful in product development and design, for better understanding and optimization of the supply chain, for detailed study of market opportunities, sensitivity analysis and decision making.
Life cycle costing (LCC) can also be used as a supportive tool for assessing the economic dimensions of the products life cycle over the different stages. The detailed structure of supply chain, processes, raw materials consumption, use of water and energy, transportation activities, etc. provides a good basis for cost analysis and optimization.
Our team is determined to prove the efficiency of LCA on the social, environmental and economic aspects of construction sector. So far, we have finished our first project for life cycle assessment and preparation of LCA-based type III environmental declaration of an external thermal insulation composite system (ETICS) offered on the Bulgarian market. We have received positive feedback from the verifying organization and we are awaiting the official certificate to be issued by the end of January 2018.
We strongly believe that our collaboration with manufacturers, designers, government authorities and the partnerships we establish with LCA practitioners from other countries will help improving the competitiveness of the construction sector. We believe that LCA audit can serve as a basis for a better organization of the processes throughout a building’s life cycle in such a way that the environmental load to be controlled and minimized.
