The Circular Economy of Steel Roofing and Cladding and Its Environmental Impacts—A Case Study for New Zealand

Krishanu Roy (), Aflah Alamsah Dani, Vince Say, Zhiyuan Fang and James B. P. Lim
Additional contact information
Krishanu Roy: School of Engineering, The University of Waikato, Private Bag 3105, Hamilton 3240, New Zealand
Aflah Alamsah Dani: School of Engineering, The University of Waikato, Private Bag 3105, Hamilton 3240, New Zealand
Vince Say: Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering, The University of Auckland, Auckland 1010, New Zealand
Zhiyuan Fang: School of Engineering, The University of Waikato, Private Bag 3105, Hamilton 3240, New Zealand
James B. P. Lim: School of Engineering, The University of Waikato, Private Bag 3105, Hamilton 3240, New Zealand

Sustainability, 2022, vol. 14, issue 24, 1-14

Abstract: This paper investigates the environmental impacts of two commonly used steel roofing and wall-cladding products in New Zealand over their life cycle, taking into consideration the recycling process. The recycling process of steel is in line with the Circular Economy (CE) approach, where the goal is to prolong the material’s lifetime and possibly reduce its environmental impacts and material waste. Although the benefit of recycling steel is well recognised, the environmental impact values of different specific steel products cannot be generalised and need to be estimated. For this, life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology and Environmental Product Declaration (EPD) were implemented to quantify the environmental impacts of the investigated steel products and to analyse the significance of the recycling process in reducing the impacts on the environment. This study considered modules C1–C4 and D to estimate the impacts of steel products. It was found that the recycled steel materials have an effect on reducing the environmental impacts, particularly the global warming potential (GWP) and photochemical ozone creation potential (POCP), both of which were negative and of −2.36 × 10 6 kg CO 2 eq and −8.10 × 10 2 kg C 2 H 4 eq, respectively. However, it is important to note that not all impacts were reduced by recycling steel, which creates trade-offs within each impact indicator. In addition, when compared with locally sourced material cladding, the imported material cladding had a 6% higher negative impact value for both GWP and POCP.

Keywords: circular economy; life cycle assessment; environmental impacts; global warming potential; steel roofing; wall-cladding; end-of-life; recycling; New Zealand (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/14/24/16832/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/14/24/16832/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:14:y:2022:i:24:p:16832-:d:1004219

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().