Life cycle assessment and environmental disturbance indicators to evaluate the sustainability of concrete mix designs

Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is applied to develop a methodology for calculating Environmental Disturbance Indicators (EDI) for six concrete mix designs of varying constituents (general use cement, limestone cement, and supplementary cementing materials). The objective of the study is to quantify the sustainability of concrete mix designs by LCA and to understand the interplay between cementitious material selection, weighting schemes applied to four environmental impacts and transportation distance (worst and best case) scenarios. The results reveal that selection of cementitious materials has the greatest effect on the EDI in comparison to the weighting schemes and transportation scenarios, in this study.