Communicating environmental information: rethinking options for construction products

ABSTRACT

A need exists for robust environmental and health-related information to support decisions about construction products and the design of new construction and refurbishment projects. This need arises in order to protect resources and the natural environment. The relevant information can be provided from, for example, a life cycle assessment in the form of impact indicators. However, the large, complex data can overburden individual actors in construction and property (real estate). Hence, the question arises as to whether and how the complexity of communicating environmental information for construction products can be simplified. This paper explores various approaches to grouping the different impact indicators and to determining proxy indicators and impact indices as single scores within these indicator groups. No appropriate single proxy indicator is appropriate for all impact indicators. However, a cluster of indicators can be formed and proxy indicators or impact indices can be determined within these groups. An application of the approaches to the impact indicators according to the currently discussed product environmental footprint approach is presented. With a series of single scores, an existing multi-criteria decision problem can be reduced and a basis for business-to-consumer communication can be formed.

KEYWORDS:

• buildings
• construction products
• environmental assessment
• environmental impacts
• environmental indicators
• environmental information
• life cycle assessment

Acknowledgments

The authors thank the three anonymous reviewers for valuable hints and suggestions and are grateful to the editor, Richard Lorch, for his assistance.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. The Blue Angel awarded in Germany is mentioned here as an example of a label with partial statements. To date, it has provided information such as ‘protects climate, protects water, protects resources, protects health’. Thus, it differentiates between protected goods and protection goals. As of 2018, the statements and forms of presentation have been changed, but still contain partial statements (see also Federal Environment Agency, 2018). The European Commission (2012) represents another proposal for the integration of partial statements into an environmental label.

2. The Montreal Protocol is an environmental agreement that primarily addresses the environmental problem of ozone depletion.