Environmental profile of asphaltic concrete in western Argentina. - consequences of implementing a recycling system

CORREA, E; ARENA, AP; DE ROSA, CARLOS

Santiago

Conferencia; PLEA 2003; 2003

Cities have become the greatest consumers of natural resources, as well as the mainpolluters of the planetary ecosystem. In order to attain higher levels of environmental sustainability itis imperative to transform the urban metabolism from linear to circular, i.e. where the major part ofthe urban wastes could be reprocessed and reused in the city`s production process. Asphalticconcrete is the material of greatest use for urban pavings in the central-western region of Argentina,for vehicular causeways and pedestrian walkways as well, but, even when its possibilities forrecycling the material are high the process has not yet been locally implemented. According to thedata issued by the ISAC (Systematic Indicator of Building Activity), the production of asphalticconcrete grew by aproximately 40% in the last decade. The goal of this study is to obtain theemissions inventory and the resource consumption generated by the production of 1 ton of asphaltic concrete in the region’s present mode and assuming the implementation of a hot-recycling process, to quantify the impacts variation of both processes and to obtain the environmental profile of asphaltic-concrete production, with and without recycling, as to assess the environmental benefits derived from the implementation of the tecnology. The Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) technique was used as a tool. To quantity the emissions generated by the productive process the IPCC (Intergoverment Panel on Climatic Change) and the EMEP/CORINAIR (Atmospheric Emission Inventory Guidebook) proposed methodologies were used. Finally, the Impact Evaluation will be performed using the EDIP 96 methodology.