Journal Pre-proof

Comparison of environmental assessment methods when reusing

building components: a case study

Catherine De Wolf, Endrit Hoxha, Corentin Fivet

PII: S2210-6707(20)30543-6
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scs.2020.102322
Reference: SCS 102322

To appear in: Sustainable Cities and Society

Received Date: 17 May 2019

Revised Date: 4 June 2020
Accepted Date: 6 June 2020

Please cite this article as: De Wolf C, Hoxha E, Fivet C, Comparison of environmental
assessment methods when reusing building components: a case study, Sustainable Cities
and Society (2020), doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scs.2020.102322

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 Comparison of environmental assessment methods when
reusing building components: a case study

Catherine De Wolf1*, Endrit Hoxha2, Corentin Fivet1

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Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland

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*
catherine.dewolf@epfl.ch

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2
Epoka University, Faculty of Architecture and Engineering, Albania

Highlights
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 Challenges when allocating environmental impacts of reused building components
 Case study of a commercial building with reused components

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Comparison of design with upstream reuse and design for downstream reuse
 Comparison of six impact allocation methods over three typical life cycles
 Environmental assessment issues when applying circular economy principles in
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construction
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Abstract
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The building industry is responsible for 35% of all solid waste in Europe and more than a third of
greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. To address this, applying circular economy principles to the
building sector is crucial, for example by reusing building elements from demolition sites rather
than extracting and producing new materials. However, most current life-cycle assessment (LCA)
tools are not appropriate to evaluate the environmental impact of a building when its components
originate from prior buildings and/or will be used in future unknown ones. Still, robust
measurement is needed to demonstrate the benefits of reuse towards environmentally sustainable
cities. This paper compares existing methodologies to quantify the global warming potential
(GWP, expressed in kgCO2e/unit) of recycled/recyclable and reused/reusable products, selected

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within widely recognised standards, rating schemes, and academic studies, such as the cut-off
method, the end-of-life method, the distributed allocation (PAS-2050) method, the Environmental
Footprint method, the Degressive method and the SIA 2032 method. Based on these recognised
approaches for assessing the GWP of products, new equations are written and applied to buildings
with reused/reusable materials for each of the methods. The Kopfbau Halle 118 building
(Winterthur, CH, 2021), which is designed with reclaimed elements from local demolition sites, is
chosen as a case study. Discrepancies in LCA methods are highlighted by applying them to three
different life cycles corresponding to the first, intermediate, or final use of building components.
This paper shows that current quantification methods to assess reuse give wide-ranging results and
do not address the full spectrum of the reuse practice, that their boundaries are too limited, and
that a number of critical features are currently hardly quantifiable, such as embedded use value,
versatility, storage and transformation impacts, user-owner separation, dis/re-mountability, or
design complexity.

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Keywords: embodied carbon; reuse; life cycle assessment; circular economy; buildings

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 1. Introduction

The building industry, which is responsible for 40% of primary energy demand, is the most
resource-intensive sector in all industrialised countries, producing a third of all generated waste in
Europe and emitting more than a third of global anthropogenic greenhouse gases (European
Commission, 2019). It is therefore critical to identify an effective means of remediating this
detrimental condition worldwide. Benchmarking the embodied carbon in buildings is an important
first step towards reducing their environmental impacts (Simonen et al., 2017). This effort can only
move forward if time is considered when designing buildings, i.e. if materials are thought of in
larger industrial and social systems that span multiple use cycles, hence creating a circular economy.

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In a circular economy (Kirchherr et al., 2017; EllenMcArthur Foundation, 2019), design, use,
maintenance, repair, refurbishment, reuse and remanufacturing are leveraged to close energy and

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material loops while minimising resource use, waste generation, and greenhouse gas emissions.
This concept contrasts with the predominant linear extract-produce-dispose model. When
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building components are used over multiple life cycles in multiple buildings, allocation of
environmental impacts is debated. Paiho et al. (2020) describe the challenges and enablers of a
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circular economy in cities (food, buildings, mobility, nature) and concludes that indicators are
needed to show the progress of a transition towards ‘circular’ cities. Such indicators inherently
contribute to defining what makes a city sustainable (Petit-Boix et al., 2017) and should integrate
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existing sustainability rating systems (Huang et al., 2015) or goal-oriented assessment frameworks
(Cohen, 2017).
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Recent European Union (EU) efforts largely praise the reuse of building components as an
attractive path towards sustainability (EU, 2016). Still, the reliability of such a conclusion remains
hard to judge and current assessment methods are not robust enough to allow their day-to-day
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application by designers. For a series of reasons (Ritzén and Sandström, 2017; Bullen and Love,
2011; Tingley and Davison, 2011), industrial reuse is a strategy that is explored sporadically in
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Western countries today, although it has been shown that it can provide valuable economic and
social benefits (Wijkman and Skånberg, 2015). Reuse, unlike repair and recycling, extends the
service life of components by limiting their transformation and hence the manufacturing of new
components and the generation of additional waste (Baker-Brown, 2017; Ghyoot et al., 2018). The
use value of a component is usually redefined. Additional costs related to the refurbishment,
transport, and storage of the components in between two use cycles arise. Reuse may or may not
involve a change of location or be reused for the same purpose. In addition, the potential to be

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reused in future cycles does not only depend on the material types and quantities but also on the
geometry and topology of the components and on the assembly process of the system. From a
design perspective (Fivet and Brütting, 2020), reuse happens in two ways:

1. Design with upstream reuse – the design of new products from existing, reclaimed
components: achieved environmental benefits are evaluated once former building
components are reused in newly built projects (Thormark, 2000; USEPA, 2011, Paduart et
al, 2011, Aye et al., 2012; Akbarnezhad et al., 2014; Diyamandoglu and Fortuna, 2015;
Assefa and Ambler, 2017);
2. Design for downstream reuse – the design of new products whose components are meant to
be reused in future systems that are sometimes unpredictable: environmental benefits are

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predicted to compare reuse with other end-of-life options like recycling, energy recovery,
or landfill (Gao et al., 2001; Boyd et al., 2012; Vefago and Avallenada, 2013; Chau et al.,

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2017).

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Figure 1 illustrates how design from and for reuse relate to the stages of conventional life-cycle
assessment (LCA), as described in the European Standard (EN 15978, 2011).
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Figure 1: Circular concept of design from and for reuse at the building or component scale, based on life cycle stages from EN 15978 (2011) and SIA
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2032 (2018)

2. Problem statement and methodology

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This paper compares various current LCA methodologies in Europe, applying them to a case study
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of a recent building in Winterthur, Switzerland, that is primarily made with reused components.
The aim is to highlight how currently used methodologies for assessing the environmental impacts
of buildings are not adapted to assess the impact savings/burdens related to reuse in buildings in
a quantitative and accurate way, as the allocations of the benefits and loads of reuse are addressed
in different life-cycle stages and in different building life-cycles. The case study shows that the
interpretation of LCA results differ for the same building component or building according to
different assessment methodologies. Moreover, the lack of quantification of embedded use value,

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versatility, storage and transformation impacts, user-owner separation, dis/re-mountability, and
design complexity is illustrated. Figure 1 illustrates the life cycle stages for the LCA of buildings
according to the European Norms EN 15804 and the Swiss Norms SIA 2032. Stages A1-3 are
known as the production stage, A4-5 as the construction process stage, B1-B5 the embodied use
stage, and C1-4 the end-of-life stage. An extra module D is defined in the European Norms to
account for the loads and benefits beyond the system boundary of potential reuse, recycling, and
recovery. Operational stages B6 and B7 are excluded in this paper, which focuses only on the
embodied stages.

To perform the LCA of the case study, data from ecoinvent (2019) and from the Co-ordination
Conference of the Construction Sector and the Buildings of Public Owner database (KBOB, 2019)

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are used. Ecoinvent is a globally recognized life cycle inventory data source initiated in Switzerland
and therefore has data specific to the Swiss construction industry. KBOB publishes a regularly

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updated list of embodied carbon coefficients of the most common construction materials used in
Switzerland. The calculation methodologies to account for the environmental impacts of reused
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building components are discussed extensively in section 3. The different methodologies are
applied and compared in section 4.
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3. Literature review of existing assessment methods
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While literature about LCA of reuse is recent, researchers and institutions have looked at the
assessment of environmental benefits of recycling for the past decades. Recycling induces a
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complete remanufacturing of the material and therefore often uses energy (e.g. steel melting) or
downgrades materials (e.g. concrete crushing). On the contrary, reuse entails a minimum amount
of transformation by using the component again with its original features (e.g. reuse of timber
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beam on another site). Frischknecht (2010) distinguishes two strategies for assessing the recycling
of materials in LCA: one credits the recycled content and the other the recycling rate. The first
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strategy is incentivising recycling at the production stage, while the second is incentivising recycling
at the end-of-life stage. Allacker et al. (2017) have reviewed end-of-life formulas from existing
methodologies for the European Commission Environmental Footprint initiative. Although the
environmental impact assessment of material recycling has been discussed for a long time (Ekvall
and Tillman, 1997), how to assess the reuse of building components is still debated because existing
methods differ from each other on how the impacts are allocated in the various cycles of a
component’s life. Carpenter et al. (2012) discuss LCA of end-of-life management of construction

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and demolition debris. Scheepens et al. (2016) also try to assess the impacts of complex circular
economy systems. Elia et al. (2017) measure circular economy strategies through index methods.
Assefa and Ambler (2017) measured the potential reduction of the environmental impacts of
repurposing buildings entirely. However, for the reuse of building components, a consensus is
needed to transparently evaluate the environmental impacts associated to each building from/in
which components are reused. This requires a trans-scalar sustainability performance method from
material to urban scale.

Various approaches to assess the complete life cycle impact of reused building components
compete, each using different assumptions and equations when it comes to the definition of the
assessment boundary and the impact allocation. For example, if one evaluates the environmental

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benefits of choosing reused components in a new building, design with upstream reuse is incentivised,
while if you allocate some of those benefits to the building source of the reused components, design

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for downstream reuse is incentivised. Consequently, results of these various approaches cannot be
compared, combined, and predicted reliably. Worse, assessments can easily be tailored to produce
desired results. -p
The main characteristic of reuse is that the lifespan of a component is distributed over multiple
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building life cycles (Figure 2). A number of authors, norms, and standards (Ekvall and Tillman,
1997; Nicholson et al., 2009; Frischknecht, 2010; Allacker et al., 2017; ISO 14040, 2006; ISO 14044,
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2006; BSI, 2008; EN 15804, 2019; BRE Global, 2013) have proposed various methods to assess
the environmental impacts over multiple life cycles. This paper analyses the different methods
proposed by widely recognised standards and rating schemes as well as previous academic studies
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of those standards. In order to express their differences better, the methods are applied to three
different life cycles corresponding to the first, intermediate, or final use of a building component.
In the first use cycle, a component is produced from virgin resources. It is supposed to be reused
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in consecutive intermediate cycles, which are repeated an unknown number of times. In the last
use cycle, the component is landfilled, recycled or incinerated with energy recovery.
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The following sections give a detailed overview of the existing methods to allocate impacts of a
building component over a building use cycle. This paper proposes new equations for the reuse of
components in the case of buildings. They are based on existing guides and academic literature
defining equations which are most often applied to allocate impacts of recycling of products with
smaller lifespans. The quality properties of the components at the end of each use cycle are
considered unchanged in most methods. With no perfect maintenance of the components, Ekvall

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and Tillman (1997) suggest using a coefficient that corrects the quality of the components. The
scope of this paper addresses the reuse of building components with no quality loss. Future
research should also include quality loss of reused components while managing uncertainty in the
equations.

3.1. Cut-off method (100:0)

The cut-off method (BSI, 2008) is mainly used for assessing the recycling of building products.
Equation 1 uses the same logic for reuse in buildings, including the impacts of the construction
and use stages (equation 1).
I=(1-R1 )∙IP +IC +IU +R1 ∙IR +(1-R2 )∙ID (1)

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where:
I environmental impact

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IP environmental impact of production
IC environmental impact of construction
IU environmental impact of use
IR
ID
R1 and R2
environmental impact of reuse
environmental impact of disposal
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coefficients with value zero or one depending on the use cycle of the
component
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• For the first use cycle, R1 = 0 and R2 = 1
• For the intermediate use cycle, R1 = 1 and R2 = 1
• For the last use cycle, R1 = 1 and R2 = 0
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The environmental impacts of each life-cycle stage (e.g. production) are counted within the life
cycle in which they actually occur (e.g. the initial life cycle for production impacts, as this is the life
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cycle in which the materials are actually produced). This is the reason why this method is also
called “100:0”: 100% of the production impacts are attributed to the first use cycle of the
components while the other use cycles are charged with 0% of these impacts (Frischknecht, 2010;
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Allacker et al., 2017). The cut-off method encourages actors to reuse already used elements (design
with upstream reuse). However, the method does not allow building designers (of the first life cycle)
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to benefit from the environmental gains obtained when assembling components that can be more
easily reused in the future (design for downstream reuse). The BREEAM method provides similar
results (BRE Global, 2013).

3.2. End-of-Life method (0:100)

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The logic of the so-called End-of-Life (EoL) method (BSI, 2008) related to production impacts is
the opposite of that of the cut-off method as shown in equation 2. Also known as the 0:100
method, it does not allocate the production impacts to its first use cycle but 100% of these impacts
are attributed to the last use cycle (Frischknecht, 2010; Allacker et al., 2017). The allocation of
impacts in this method assumes that building components will be reused after the initial or
intermediate life cycles: the environmental impacts of production and end-of-life are only
accounted for in the last life cycle, which encourages actors to design for downstream reuse.
However, considering the relatively long service lifetime of building components, scenarios of
reuse are difficult to accurately predict.

I=(1-R2 )∙IP +IC +IU +R2 ∙IR +(1-R2 )∙ID (2)

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3.3. Distributed allocation

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Based on the formula described in the Publicly Available Specification 2050 (PAS-2050) guide for
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the treatment of emissions associated with reuse (BSI, 2008), a distributed allocation method can
be defined: this method proposes an equally distributed allocation of both production and end-of-
life impacts in all life cycles (equation 3). The competitiveness offered by this method is a function
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of the number of use cycles, which is difficult to predict. This difficulty to predict the number of
use cycles may lower the degree of reliability of the results.
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IP +ID
I= +IC +IU +IR (3)
n
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where n is number of use cycles.

3.4. European Commission Environmental Footprint (EC EF)

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Based on the logic of the PEF equation (European Commission, 2012) used for allocating impacts
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of recycling and that of the BPX 50/50_adapted (AFNOR, 2011) formula proposed by Allacker
et al. (2017) for the European Commission Environmental Footprint (EC EF) methods, equation
4 was defined to equally allocate the environmental impacts of production and disposal stages in
the first and last use cycles, and those of reuse in intermediate consecutive use cycles.

R 1 R2 R R R R
I= (1- - ) ∙IP +IC +IU + ( 1 + 2 ) ∙IR + (1- 1 - 2 ) ∙ID (4)
2 2 2 2 2 2

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Such allocation encourages LCA-actors to employ reused components in their projects or to
construct with the aim of reusing the components in future cycles. Similar to the EoL or
distributed allocation methods, the reliability of the results is a function of the assumptions on
future reuse.

3.5. Degressive

Based on Allacker et al.’s (2017) degressive (linearly with the recycled content and recyclability rate
= 100%) method, a degressive method is also proposed in this paper adapted for the reuse of
building components, as described in equation 5, using the logic of equation 3 for the allocation
of the environmental impacts of the production and disposal stages and the logic of equation 4

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for the reuse stages. The method is dependent on the accurate prediction of scenarios.

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IP +ID I IR
I= +IC +IU +R1 ∙ R +R2 ∙ (5)
n 2 2

3.6. SIA 2032 -p

According to SIA 2032 (2018) norms in Switzerland, another methodology is being developed to
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calculate the impact of a reused building component. At the time of reuse of the building
component from its original first use (initial life cycle) to a second building (intermediate life cycle),
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the actual life span is compared with the expected total life span of the building component. For
instance, take a window with a life expectancy of 30 years. It is used for 20 years in building 1
(initial life cycle), another 10 years in building 2 (intermediate life cycle) and 10 years in building 3
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(last life cycle). Each life cycle has its own use emissions (module B). The production, construction,
and end-of-life emissions (modules A and C) are divided among the three life cycles as follows:
building 1 is taking into account two thirds (20 years / 30 years) of the A and C emissions, building
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2 is taking into account one third (the remaining 10 years) of the A and C emissions, and building
3 is taking no emissions into account as they have already been ‘paid for’ by the first two buildings
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with the window frame exceeding the expected life span, as shown in equation 6.

lcurrent lcurrent
I= ∙IP +IC +IU + ∙ID (6)
lexpected lexpected

where:
lcurrent life span of component within life cycle n if ∑current
i=1 li ≤lexpected
current
lcurrent 0 if ∑i=1 li >lexpected
lexpected expected total life span of the component

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The method supports design for downstream reuse, but by doing so, does not penalize the
premature disassembly of buildings. It also supports design with upstream reuse, but assumes we
can use components beyond their expected lifespan.

3.7. E+C-

Energie plus, Carbone moins (E+C-) is an experimental label developed by the French government to
promote buildings with net positive energy and a low carbon footprint, in preparation of the new
energy regulation RE2020 (CSTB, 2020). The label does not yet address the assessment of the
impact of the reuse of materials. In the meantime, certification scheme Certivéa (2020) recommends
to consider reused materials as if there were no new materials in a typical LCA of the building in

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which the materials are reused. This method assumes that all A – C impacts of the materials
(including production and end-of-life impacts) are allocated to the initial life cycle and a zero

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impact is accounted for in the intermediate and last life cycles. The approach is likely to change
throughout the experimentation and was therefore not included in the analysis of this paper.

3.8. Summary
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Figure 2 summarizes the discussed methodologies according to the life cycle stages defined by the
European Norms for three typical life cycles of a building component: (a) the initial, (b) an
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intermediate, and (c) the last one. These life cycles can be seen as separate scopes for LCAs
performed by (a) designers allowing downstream reuse but not achieving upstream reuse, (b)
designers achieving upstream reuse and allowing downstream reuse, and (c) designers achieving
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upstream reuse without allowing downstream reuse of the component.

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Figure 2: Overview of allocation of the environmental impacts of building components onto n use cycles

4. Differences between existing assessment methods evaluated through a case -p

study
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This paper analyses the Kopfbau Halle 118, called K.118 in the rest of this paper, designed by
Baubüro in situ and built in Winterthur, Switzerland (Figure 3). The design process started in 2017
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and the building is to be delivered in 2021. K.118 is chosen as a case study as it is almost completely
built with reused components, including its load-bearing system. Baubüro in situ provided all data
on material quantities, types, and origins. Figure 4 illustrates the sources from which materials are
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reclaimed for the construction of K.118.

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Figure 3: Design of K.118 and dismantling of façade elements leading to the choice of the red colour for the façade (Baubüro in situ, 2018)

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Figure 4: Map with demolition sites where the materials of K.118 come from, storage sites, and reference projects (Baubüro in situ, 2018)
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While the environmental benefits of reuse have been discussed by Hoxha and Fivet (2018), this
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paper studies the differences of the results of the K.118 case study with the different existing
allocation methods. To illustrate the difference among the six methods discussed in section 3, we
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evaluated the environmental impact of all building components of K.118. Original plans, material
weight, and transportation mode were used to calculate the embodied carbon of the components.
The Global Warming Potential (GWP, expressed in kgCO2e/unit) of the equivalent new building
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components with their expected lifespans, were calculated with data from ecoinvent and KBOB,
based on the life-cycle stages of a conventional LCA according to EN 15804. The bill of materials
contained the building components illustrated in Table 1. For each building component, a detailed
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description was given with the material quantities as shown in Table 2 for one of the floor types.
Table 1: Building components in the bill of materials of K.118
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Exterior walls AW1 Existing, interior insulation and planking

AW2 Existing, interior insulation, no planking
AW3 Raised straw bale wall
Floors Bo1 Misapor insulated floor
Bo2 Floor overhang of the extension
Roof DA1 Roof structure
Intermediate floors ZWD1 Gallery floor
ZWD2 Existing floor
ZWD3 New floor
Interior walls IW1 Limestone wall
IW2 New concrete wall
IW3 Interior lightweight wall construction

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 Fire protection KIW Fire protection, concrete-filled steel beam
Windows F Windows

Table 2: Example of the bill of materials for one floor building component

Bo1 Floors
Nr: Bo1 Description: Misapor insulated floors
Art: Floors Layer against: Earth
Use in: All Section: 1 (homogeneous)

Layer Thickness Lifespan Layer composition / materials Volume Density

[-] [m] [a] [-] [m3/m2] [kg/m3]
1 0.03 60 H118 hard concrete, single-layer, 27.5 pro m2 pro m2

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mm, RC quality new (KBOB 2014)
2 0.18 60 H118 construction concrete, CEM 0.18 2342
II/B, 60 kg/m3 of steel (KBOB
2014)

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3 0.3 60 H118 foam glass granulates, Misapor 0.3 170
scraps (KBOB 2014)

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For each material used in the K.118 building, the data described in Table 3 is collected, based on
the bill of quantities, information obtained from the architect, KBOB or SIA values. A simplified
LCA methodology is followed in order to be reproducible and to illustrate the differences between
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the methods discussed in this paper. The production stage impacts (A1-3) are calculated by
multiplying the material quantities (expressed in units such as m3 or kg) with KBOB’s value for
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the production impacts (kgCO2-eq/unit). The construction process stage impacts (A4-5) are
calculated by multiplying the material weight (t) with the distance from the manufacturer to the
construction site (km) and the transport mode coefficient (kgCO2-eq/t.km) for the transport
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impacts and by taking a percentage of the production impacts for the construction impacts,
according to Hoxha et al. (2016). The use stage impacts (B1-5) are calculated based on the expected
lifetime of each element in order to account for the number of replacements of a product during
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the lifetime of a building. The end-of-life stage impacts (A1-3) are calculated by multiplying the
material quantities (expressed in units such as m3 or kg) with KBOB’s value for the end-of-life
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impacts (kgCO2-eq/unit). The benefits and loads of reuse impacts (D) are calculated by multiplying
the material weight (t) with the distance from the deconstruction site to the storage site and then
on to the new construction site (km) and the transport mode coefficient (kgCO2-eq/t.km) for the
transport impacts and adding twice the construction impacts (A5) for the dismantling and
remounting impacts.

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 Table 3: Data used for LCA calculation, example of an OSB panel used in K.118

Values Source
Description OSB in situ
Unit kg unit
A1-3 (kgCO2eq/unit) 0.487 KBOB
C1-4 (kgCO2eq/unit) 0.127 KBOB
Specific Quantity (m3/m2) 0.012 in situ
Surface element (m2) 262.21 in situ
Absolute Quantity (m3) 3.15 specific quantity * surface element
Density (kg/m3) 605 KBOB
Quantity (Unit) 1904 density * absolute quantity
Distance manufacturer to construction site (km) 300 in situ
Distance demolition site to storage site (km) 2 in situ

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Distance storage site to construction site (km) 2.7 in situ
Distance demolition site to construction site (km) 4.7 in situ
Transport mode Truck in situ

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Transport mode coefficient (kgCO2-eq / t.km) 0.11 KBOB
Expected lifetime of element (yr) 30 SIA
Building lifetime (yr) 50 -p hypothesis

The results for stages A1-3 and C1-4 are obtained from the coefficients available in KBOB. The
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results for stages A4-5, B1-5, and D are calculated based on transport distances, transport modes,
and percentages of the production and end-of-life emissions (e.g. the use stage B4 for
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replacement). Figure 5 illustrates the impacts for the six allocation methods and assuming three
different scenarios: building components are used in their first life-cycle, in any intermediate life-
cycle, or in their final life cycle. This is a theoretical exercise, as in practice not all building
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components would be reused in exactly the same buildings throughout all their life-cycles.
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Figure 5: GWP of the K.118 building as if it was built with entirely new materials and reused entirely at its end-of-life (first life cycle), as if it was built
entirely with reused materials and reused entirely at its end-of-life (intermediate life cycle), and as if it was built entirely with reused materials but not
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reused at all at its end-of-life (last life cycle); for each assignment method

Results show the diversity of allocation methods for the GWP of the building. The Cut-off method
allocates the environmental impacts of the production stage (A1-A3) to the first life cycle, but the
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environmental impacts of the end-of-life stage (C1-C4) of reused building components to the last
life cycle. The intermediate life cycle is then only charged with the impacts of transport and
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construction (A4-5), of use (B1-5), and of refurbishment (D). The aim of the cut-off method is to
give reliable results by allocating the impacts of components at the moment when they occur, but
numbers do not support the development of buildings with components that can be reused in the
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future. The EoL method allocates both production and end-of-life impacts to the last life cycle.
The aim is to give an incentive for designing for reuse in the future, not to reuse already existing
components. The distributed allocation (PAS-2050) method distributes the impacts of production
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and end-of-life stages in proportion to the number of life cycles of the building components, to
incentivise design with upstream reuse and for downstream reuse. However, the number of life
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cycles of building components is difficult to predict. The EC EF method allocates the impacts of
production and end-of-life stage to the first and last life cycle, sharing them in a 50:50 ratio, to
remediate the difficulty to predict the number of life cycles. The degressive method is a mix of the
distributed allocation (PAS-2050) and the EC EF method. Results from the SIA 2032 norms
follow a specific distribution that is function of the expected lifespan of each component.

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As further illustrated on Figure 6, there is also a diversity of GWP values across the three typical
life cycles scenarios. In other words, the interpretation of these results will vary widely according
to the chosen allocation method and according to assumptions made regarding the previous and
future life cycles of building components.

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Figure 6. Global Warming Potential per gross floor area of the entire K.118 building for each typical life-cycle.

As shown in Figure 6, values of GWP per GFA vary in the ratio of one to two (increase of 94

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kgCO2eq/m2) when considering first life cycle and of one to three (increase of 115 kgCO2eq/m2)
for last life cycle. All methods give similar global values for intermediate life cycles; and those
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values are globally smaller than for the first and last life cycle, meaning that, when averaging over
all allocation methods, reuse always leads to beneficial numbers if building components are said
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to be in an intermediate life-cycle.

Stages A4-5 (transport, construction & installation process) and B1-5 (use, maintenance, repair,
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refurbishment, replacement) always provide the same values whatever the chosen allocation
method. However, stages A1-3 (raw material supply, transport, manufacturing), C1-4 (de-
construction/demolition, transport, waste processing, disposal), and D (reuse potential) show a
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large variation of values across the allocation methods. As shown in Figures 5 and 6, the SIA 2032
method is the most beneficial one when considering end-of-life scenarios and the EoL method
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remains the most beneficial when considering first-use scenarios.

Of particular note, the results would include even more uncertainty in reality when all building
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components have a different life history.

5. Discussion

5.1. Life-Cycle Assessment (LCA)

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As exemplified in the previous section, LCA quantification methods do not provide consistent
values when assessing buildings whose components have or will have multiple life-cycles. Hence,
they hinder consistent and objective comparisons across scenarios. In other words, they are not
sufficient to compare design with upstream reuse strategies against design from downstream reuse strategies.

A number of critical features that are specific to reuse are not included in the boundaries of current
conventional assessments or are not considered in the establishment of embodied carbon
coefficients as discussed in sections 5.2 to 5.6. The following sub-sections discuss additional
features specific to the assessment of environmental benefits of reuse.

5.2. Embedded use value

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The efficiency of a reuse strategy also depends on the ratio achieved between the actual function

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of the product and its embedded potential. For instance, reusing a high-performance column from
a high-rise building in a low-rise lightweight building such as a garden shed wastes the structural
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capacity of the column, potentially preventing the column from being reused at its best elsewhere.
In other words, the utilization of the reused component – i.e. how much of the qualities embedded
in the component are used wisely – should also be included in the assessment.
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All methods analysed in this paper assume a perfect “demand-supply” coordination. For example,
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when a small column is needed for a garden shed (demand), a small column from a dismantled
low-rise storage unit (supply) is reused, while in reality there may only be a large column from a
dismantled high-rise office building available (imperfect “demand-supply” coordination). None of
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the existing methods addresses this discrepancy. In the K.118, this imperfect “demand-supply”
coordination is illustrated by Figure 7: the window frames found (a) are slightly larger than the
façade openings, leading to an adapted design (d). This shortcoming is also related to the ‘ratio of
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use’ over the lifespan of a component, as addressed in the SIA 2032 method.
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Figure 7: (a) Window frames reused from the demolition site, (b) dismantling of window frames, (c) storage, (d) adapted design for use of these window
frames in K.118 (Baubüro in situ, 2018)
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Critical indicators of reuse such as versatility can hardly be quantified. Although critical, they are
generally poorly addressed or simply omitted due to a (current) lack of relevant metrics. Versatility
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is here understood as the ability of a product to serve other functions than the one for which it is
designed or previously used. For instance, it describes whether a highway girder can become a
beam in a house, as was the case in the Big Dig House (Single Speed Design, 2009) or whether a
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gas pipeline’s structure can be reused for making a truss, as was the case for the London Olympics
Stadium (Allwood and Cullen, 2012). Currently, there is no method that attempts to quantify
versatility irrespective of the nature of the product. The service life of a reusable product and its
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number of cycles decrease rapidly if the nature of its new uses has a high damage-risk. Moreover,
the reuse of products also influences the service life of other products in the system.
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5.3. Storage and transformation

In order to adjust supply with demand, reusable components must circulate and be stored in
between two use cycles (Ghyoot et al., 2018). This implies either the creation of additional
infrastructure (Anggadjaja, 2014) or the use of existing retail stores (Diyamandoglu and Fortuna,
2015). The environmental impacts related to long-term storage are specific to the assessment of

19
reuse. Storage impacts should consider the impact of the construction and maintenance of the
storage facility, its operational impact, and land use. The usefulness of a product is in line with the
magnitude of its storage impacts since less-demanded products will have to be stored for a longer
time. It is expected that the generalization of Building Information Modeling (BIM) will allow
records of recently disassembled components to be shared more easily and favour faster
redistribution of components (Akbarnezhad et al., 2014). The storage of the window frames for
K.118 is illustrated in Figure 7.c.

On top of storage impacts, transformation impacts should be considered when the product is not
already in shape to fulfil its new function. In the example of the window frame in K.118, the design
team studied the possibility of cutting the window frame to fit the opening size in the new building.

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However, the energy needed for the transformation was considered too high. If it had to be treated
in another facility before it is reused, additional impacts would occur. Moreover, Gorgolewski

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(2008) shows that reused building components sometimes require coverings because of
architectural aesthetics, which increase impacts and costs.

5.4. User-owner separation

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The common assumption is that the user of the product is its owner, and both remain the same
throughout its service life. However, reuse strategies are potentially put in place together with
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sharing dynamics. Such a paradigm would call for multiple but simultaneous levels of assessment:
owner, distributor, and user. For example, the reuse of the window frame in K.118 could be
bought or leased by the owner of the K.118 building. Rios and Grau (2019) discuss a product-
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service system (PSS) model as a shift from selling products (e.g. a window frame) to selling services
(e.g. a façade opening) to incentivize a circular economy. If a method that favours design for
downstream reuse is used, the first owner of the reused window benefits from the emission savings;
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while if a method that favours design with upstream reuse is used, the second owner who reuses the
window benefits from the same savings.
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5.5. Reusability

Another essential critical indicator which is currently hardly quantified is the ability to be
dismantled or remounted. Reusability measures the repair and transformation required during
assembly and disassembly. Although the quantification of this measure is not properly defined, it
is known that damage is caused by different factors: fragility of elements (Gorgolewski, 2008);

20
poorly designed connectors (Hechler et al., 2012); and dependence of elements with each other
(Durmisevic, 2019). For example, in the K.118 building, a stone element was stored in order to be
reused in a floor, but the element turned out to be much weaker than foreseen (Figure 8).

Figure 8: Unexpected damage on reused component in K.118 (Baubüro in situ, 2018)

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This indicator is essential as downstream reuse can only happen if components can be dismantled
and remounted. Moreover, dismantling often introduces damage. In all existing case studies,

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additional material was needed to ensure the assembly. Although indicators of reusability can be
independent from LCAs, they should help reduce uncertainties when assessing the environmental
impacts of scenarios of future reuse.
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5.6. Design complexity

Reuse might increase complexity at three construction stages: design, assembly, and disassembly;
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which ultimately affects the impacts of all life cycle stages. Design complexity is directly related to
the complexity of the assembly and disassembly processes since both are functions of the geometry
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of the components and their connections (Guy and Ciarimboli, 2008). The design complexity of
reuse imposes an excellent coordination of construction actors (Gorgolewski, 2008) and usually
suffers from a lack of drawings and details of elements (Kuehlen et al., 2014), a lack of codes and
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standards for reuse (Guy and Ciarimboli, 2008), and gaps between demand and supply
(Gorgolewski, 2008), which may convince designers to manufacture new materials rather than
explore reuse options. Current developments of material passports are addressing this challenge
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directly (Madaster, 2019; Durmisevic, 2019) as well as recent publications of guidelines (Ghyoot et
al., 2018; Baker-Brown, 2017). Still, design complexity cannot be fully quantified, irrespectively of
the nature of the product. The time-consuming process of disassembly and reassembly is often a
barrier for choosing reuse over demolishment and rebuilding.

6. Conclusion

21
This paper reviewed the most commonly accepted quantification methods for the LCA of
recycled/reused products and applied them to the environmental impact assessment of reused
building components, showing that the current practice of assessment of reuse in buildings
prevents results from being compared in a reliable way. New equations based on existing LCA
methods conducive to recycling and reuse have then been applied to a case study while
differentiating the first life cycle, the intermediate ones, and the last one. Based on an analysis of
these methods and discussions with the designer of the case study, a series of current challenges
to the proper quantification of reuse were presented. They stem from three observations: no
holistic distribution of impacts is possible, current boundaries of assessment are too restricted, and
qualitative aspects such as versatility or reusability are hard to quantify. In conclusion, we propose
the following methodological inputs in order to address these drawbacks.

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The LCA should be broken down systematically into three distinct assessments whose impacts

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cannot be summed up or isolated: one considering the first life cycle of the building or building
component, one considering any intermediate life cycles, and one considering the last life cycle.
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This goes hand in hand with the inclusion of storage impacts, transformation impacts, and
embedded use values in the boundaries of the assessment. Moreover, evaluations should be
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systematically refined with uncertainty analyses, which would call for additional research on reuse.
Indeed, on the one hand accurate data on GWP is still missing, on the other hand current
functional units do not allow the analysis of impacts related to not just material quantities but also
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components geometry, topology, and connectivity. For instance, one will have to probabilistically
quantify material degradation when dismantling and reassembling sub-components, now and over
future decades. Moreover, risks of non-reuse scenarios should be considered in these analyses.
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Future work should explore the above recommendations to develop quantitative and qualitative
criteria for the environmental impact assessment of reused components in buildings. We
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recommend further development of the equations provided for the evaluation and allocation of
impacts to also include factors of embedded use value, storage and transformation, user-owner
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separation, reusability and design complexity.

Current LCA methods are not adapted yet to the reuse practice and do not include a qualitative
judgement of the environmental benefits or loads of reuse. GWP could be expressed in kgCO2e per
year of use to do so. If policies are to be written for enforcing a transition to a circular economy
in cities, discrepancies in the results for reused components from one methodology to another
need to be solved. A proposed solution is to design a web-diagram with a score for design with

22
downstream reuse, a score for design with upstream reuse, a score for life cycle 1, scores for life cycles 2
to n-1, and a score for life cycle n. These results should be calculated by building component sets
rather than for an entire building as the building will often be composed of reused and new
materials.

Whereas the adoption of a circular economy by the construction industry is an urgent matter for
environmental, social, and economic reasons, all considerations in this paper restate that much
remain to be done before robust assessments of reuse scenarios exist, hence before reuse scenarios
can be compared and lead to an improvement of the way cities are built.

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Declaration of interests

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The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal
relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.
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Acknowledgements
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The authors would like to thank Baubüro in situ for the data provided on the K118 case study and
for the many fruitful discussions about reuse, especially with Kerstin Mueller, Benjamin Poignon,
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Marc Angst, and Harald Huth. The authors would also like to thank Katrin Pfäffli for her
explanations on the current assessment methodologies in Switzerland. This project has received
funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the
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Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No. 665667, from the Swiss Government Excellence
Scholarship, from Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), and from EGIS Concept
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(Elioth).

23
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