Comparative Assessment of the environmental impacts of paving types: asphalt, concrete and block pavers, used on causeways of residential neighbourhoods in the city of Mendoza, Argentina

PABLO ARENA; ERICA CORREA; CARLOS DE ROSA

Brisbane. Australia

Conferencia; LCA THIRD AUSTRALIAN CONFERENCE; 2002

“The construction of streets involves the use of materials of high energy cost, such as cement, and other which are non renewable, such as bituminous compounds and gravel, the last usually extracted from river margins of high landscape value. The processes involved in the extraction, production and transportation of these materials consume huge quantities of non renewable energy resources and emit enormous quantities of solid, liquid and gaseous pollutants. During the paving process, heavy machinery, with very powerful engines are used, which implies more energy consumption and release of pollutants. Maintenance and repaving activities generate enormous volumes of solid wastes, which being chemically inert cannot be reprocessed by natural ecosystems. From the viewpoint of the urban environment, the infrastructure of circulation networks, pedestrian and vehicular, presents itself as an ensemble of components of unquestionable relevance, since their quantitative incidence over the total urban area is highly significant. For instance, in traditional gridiron urban areas, the vehicular causeways occupy 15,9% of the urban soil, and in rectangular layouts commonly used in social housing neighborhoods, this value reaches 22,6%. Despite this severe picture, the construction of streets has not received enough consideration from the sustainability stand point. The goal of this study is to evaluate from the environmental viewpoint the performance of concrete block pavers used in residential streets, which presence in urban areas in rapidly increasing, as compared with the more traditional poured- in- place concrete and asphalt paving types.  These three paving types cover almost 100 % of the total paved surface in residential streets in Mendoza. For the evaluation of the environmental impact an abridged Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) procedure has been used, including all materials and processes involved in the construction and maintenance of every paving type. Due to the lack of information, end-of-life activities have not been included in this study. The functional unit considered is a 960 m2 street stretch, 100 mts length, belonging to the Central Park area, in the City of Mendoza”.