Evaluation of Sustainability potentials within Switzerland of new construction techniques and materials tested at the NEST building at
EMPA – case study on the Urban Mining and Recycling Unit.

Abstract

This master thesis intends to assess the sustainability potential that we can get for Switzerland by placing the Urban Mining and Recycling (UMAR) concept at the center of building design. To achive this, we develop a 3-step strategy, which addresses the implementation of the UMAR concept at building element level, building level and country level. The applied methodology for the sustainability potential assessment is the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and the indicators used for exhibiting this potential is Cumulative Energy Demand (CED), Global Warming Potential (GWP) and the Swiss Ecopoints (UBP).. At the center of this strategy lies the UMAR unit, an innovative building, recently integrated in the NEST building. The unit’s design is based on 2 principles: a) use of recyclable or recycled materials made from waste and b) apply the design-for-dissassembly concept for an easy deconstruction.
In the first step we compare the most important building elements of the unit (roof, floor, outside and inside walls) with conventional ones used in Switzerland taken out of the free version of the Bauteilkataloge. The results show that the roof and floor show the biggest potential for impact reduction in the above mentioned indicators followed -at a lesser degree- by the outside and inside walls.
In step 2, we perform 2 LCAs called step 2.1 and step 2.2 (one excluding the use phase and one taking it into account) on the UMAR unit and compare it with a typical Swiss building made out of concrete. For simplicity, we assume that this building has the same shape and size with the UMAR unit. The results show that the UMAR unit performs much better in all impact categories than the conventional building (at least 59.2% and 20.7% reduction for the 2 LCAs).
Finally, in step 3 we use the results from step 2.2 analysis and relying on the real estate survey made by Credit Suisse about the new builty single-family houses in Switzerland during 2017. Then we apply the UMAR building elements to the concrete building used for comparison. Assuming an average 80 m2 per single-family house, we show that we are able to reduce the impact in all 3 indicators by at least 45%.