Absolute Environmental Sustainability of Materials Dissipation: Application for Construction Sector

Wafaa Baabou (), Anders Bjørn and Cécile Bulle
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Wafaa Baabou: CIRAIG, Department of Strategy and Corporate Social Responsibility, ESG UQAM, Montréal, QC H2X 3X2, Canada
Anders Bjørn: Department of Management, John Molson School of Business, Concordia University, 1450 Guy St, Montréal, QC H3H 0A1, Canada
Cécile Bulle: CIRAIG, Department of Strategy and Corporate Social Responsibility, ESG UQAM, Montréal, QC H2X 3X2, Canada

Resources, 2022, vol. 11, issue 8, 1-22

Abstract: The materials used globally in the construction sector are projected to more than double in 2060, causing some to deplete. We argue that access to the services that the resources provide must be protected, thus implying that a carrying capacity (CC) for resource dissipation must be set. Dissipation accrues when the resource becomes inaccessible to users. The CC allows defining a maximum dissipation rate that allows to maintain those resources’ availability in the future. The CC of the dissipation of the resource may be operationalized to characterize the resource use impact, using absolute environmental sustainability assessments principles. The study makes it possible to determine a dissipation CC as the world dissipation rate that would enable all users to adapt to using an alternative resource before the material’s reserve is entirely dissipated. The allocation of a fraction of this CC to the building sector was performed using equal per capita and grandfathering sharing principles. Finally, we applied the method to the case of steel in a school life cycle. The results show that the actual dissipation rates of iron, copper and manganese in the building sector exceed the dissipation CC by 70%, 56% and 68%, respectively. However, aluminum dissipation is 90% less than the assigned CC. The allocation to schools shows that the results are influenced by the choice of allocation principle. The application in the case of steel use of the school life cycle shows an exceedance of the CC that decreases when increasing the building life span.

Keywords: construction materials; schools; dissipation; user adaptation; carrying capacity; allocation approaches (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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