A plant based LCA of high-strength prestressed concrete elements and the assessment of a practical ecological variant

In the context of the rising awareness regarding sustainability, a Belgian producer of high-strength prestressed concrete elements for structural and civil applications aimed to clarify several aspects of ecological certifications and standards, and the application of these items within the company. In a first part of this paper, a life cycle assessment (LCA) for the precast element production up to delivery on site is presented, in which accurate company information and specific data from internal and external databases is used. The LCA determines that although reinforcing steel and cement dominate the impact contributions, other factors such as transport by road, maintenance, aggregates, element fabrication and concrete waste are non-negligible. Subsequently, a study of an ecological variant, presented in the second part of this paper, shows that several adaptions within the manufacturing process can potentially reduce the impact on the environment with 20–30%, depending on the assessment method used.