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Ninety five percent of the construction and demolition waste is recycled in the Netherlands. Most of it is used for low value applications such as road base materials; the use of secondary material in buildings is still less than 3%7. In order to recover waste for higher value applications, enhancing selective demolition and waste management practices is of crucial importance. In this study Life Cycle Assessment and Life Cycle Costing of a demolition project in Almere was carried out to identify the environmental and financial hotspots in the selective demolition and waste management in the Dutch context. Results suggest that (1) the best practice selective demolition and (2) the substitution of virgin concrete aggregate with secondary aggregate processed by Advanced Dry Recovery (ADR) system, will lead to environmental and financial improvements compared to the business as usual practice. On the building level, the advantage is mainly due to connecting the demolition and the re-development projects, which maximizes local reuse of old building components in the new building. The key of success for selective demolition is pre-audit to identify and connect to the market for material reuse. This is a direction that BIM (building information modeling) technology can contribute. With regards to the ADR concrete aggregate manufacturing, it was found that the transport distance for aggregate supply was the largest contributor to the environmental impacts and costs. Therefore it is important to locate ADR facilities next to concrete manufactures and/or provide ADR service on- site.

The Master's programme Industrial Ecology is jointly organised by Leiden University and Delft University of Technology., Industrial Ecology

En los últimos años, ha habido un aumento significativo en la atención internacional hacia la acumulación de plásticos en el mar. Aunque se han realizado esfuerzos para cuantificar fuentes y cantidades exactas de residuos, así como entender sus impactos, estos intentos siguen siendo limitados. Para abordar esta problemática, herramientas como el Análisis de Ciclo de Vida (ACV) deben ser mejoradas e incluir indicadores que estén relacionados con el potencial daño ambiental de las partículas plásticas en la naturaleza. Además, se requiere el desarrollo de inventarios de ciclo de vida (ICV) que contemplen los flujos de plásticos mal gestionados que ingresan al medio ambiente. En este contexto, esta tesis de doctorado presenta dos objetivos principales. Por un lado, diseñar una metodología para la cuantificación de flujos plásticos que estarían entrando al océano desde fuentes terrestres, con el fin de impulsar la creación de ICVs que los incluyan. Por otro lado, desarrollar una categoría de impacto de agotamiento de recursos abióticos que considere el efecto de la disipación de polímeros plásticos en la naturaleza. La primera parte del estudio permitió identificar diferentes barreras antrópicas y naturales que afectan el movimiento de los residuos hacia el mar, y diseñar una ecuación que ilustre la relevancia de los efectos de retención de plásticos. En la segunda parte, se desarrolló una categoría de impacto ambiental para cuantificar las consecuencias de estos flujos de materiales mal manejados dentro del ACV. La categoría de impacto, llamada marine circularity loss, cuantifica la pérdida de materiales plásticos en el océano que no podrían reingresar a la cadena de valor. Se espera que estos avances en la cuantificación de flujos de residuos plásticos y sus impactos en el océano permitan una toma de decisiones más adecuada frente a esta situación., In recent years, the accumulation of marine plastic has gained international attention. However, attempts to quantify sources, magnitudes, and related impacts of marine waste in a more precise way are still limited. It is important that tools, such as the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), include linkages to the potential environmental damage generated by plastic particles in nature. Likewise, life cycle inventories (LCI) must be developed including flows of mismanaged plastics that enter nature. In this context, this doctoral thesis has two main objectives. On the one hand, to design a methodology for the quantification of plastic flows that may be entering the ocean from terrestrial sources, in order to promote the creation of ICVs that include them. On the other hand, the development of an abiotic resource depletion impact category which considers the effect of the dissipation of plastic polymers in nature. The first part of the study made it possible to identify different anthropogenic and natural barriers that affect the movement of waste towards the sea, and to design an equation that allowed illustrating the relevance of the effects of plastic retention. The second part, an environmental impact category to quantify the consequences of these mismanaged material flows within the LCA was developed. The impact category, called marine circularity loss, quantifies the loss of plastic materials in the ocean that are not able to re-enter the economic value chain. It is expected that these advances in the quantification of plastic waste flows and their impacts on the ocean will allow for more appropriate decision-making to address this situation.