Life cycle assessment on recycling of construction sludges in geotechnical engineering fields

Abstract

Although waste recycling has been promoted in response to increasing environmental awareness in Japan, its marketability is being questioned due to the recycling cost. The ultimate goal of waste recycling is to reduce the environmental load. In this paper, we examined the evaluation method for social environmental efficiency to socially evaluate waste recycling, by incorporating environmental load as an environmental cost in addition to the direct cost. The social environmental efficiency evaluation including consideration of uncertainties is conducted, because waste recycling involves various uncertain elements. As the results, the social environmental significance of construction sludge recycling can be evaluated quantitatively while focusing on the particular construction sludge with a lower recycling rate.