No specific aspects are given for Module C3 for buildings, as it is likely to be predefined in building LCA studies e.g. by the use of EoL generic processes and cradle-to-grave EPD, which have already taken this aspect into account, as well as the EN 15978 standard
Please refer to the following aspect of the EeBGuide – Part A: PRODUCTS guidance document for further information, as well as the EN 15978 standard.
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8.4 Module C3 – Waste processing.
| Aspect | C-07 Waste treatment vs recycling and recovery process | |||||||
 Description |
How should the waste treatment and recycling/reuse/energy recovery of building materials be accounted for (e.g. different recycling practices, economic feasibility)? | |||||||
| Related Study Goal |
☒ stand-alone LCA | ☒ comparative assertion | ||||||
| Related Study Phase |
☒ Goal and scope definition |
☐ Life cycle inventory analysis (LCI) |
☐ Life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) |
☐ Interpretation |
☐ Reporting |
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| Relevant for |  New buildings |
 Existing buildings |
 Construction products |
 Screening LCA |
 Simplified LCA |
 Complete LCA |
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 Provisions |
The provisions in EN 15804 should be referred to. Scenarios should then be developed, based on each national context. For example, for the French context [ADEME 2010] can be referred to for estimates of the amounts of sorted and recycled materials. This aspect is likely to be predefined in every national EPD programme, and may be adopted within a given LCA study. | |||||||
 Rules from |
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 Guidance |
Module C3 provides information on waste treatment processes until the product reaches the end-of-waste state or is disposed of (included in C4). In theory, processes before the end-of-waste state is reached are waste treatment processes, and processes after the end-of-waste state is reached are recycling or recovery processes. When deciding whether a process should be included in C3 or be considered as a recycling process within Module D, the focus should be less on the terminology for the process and more on whether the waste has reached the end-of-waste state. The default scenario for the end-of-life stage C3 should be based on current national practice for demolition material. However, alternative scenarios can be given, if a range of waste treatment options is available. National schemes may provide default scenarios and models for Module C3 for various materials, based on current practice. The end-of-waste state is defined in EN 15804 6.3.4.5. All waste treatment process impacts until the end-of-waste state is reached should be included in Module C3, excluding demolition (considered in C1) and transport to waste treatment or disposal (considered in C2). The loads and benefits of recycling, recovery and reuse beyond the system boundary are recorded in Module D. Energy recovered by energy recovery processes, e.g. incineration with an efficiency greater than 60%, is recorded in Module D (as the recovery process impacts and avoided impacts of conventional generation), as the material must have reached the end-of-waste state to be considered for energy recovery (EN 15804 6.3.4.5 Note 2). Recovery processes with efficiencies of less than 60% cannot be considered as energy recovery, and must be considered as waste management processes, e.g. as incineration (Module C4). Incineration of demolition materials that have not reached the end-of-waste state must also be considered within Module C4, irrespective of the efficiency of incineration (EN 15804 6.3.4.5 Note 2). In both instances, benefits from these C3 processes beyond the system boundary can be recorded in Module D. |
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8.5 Module C4 – Disposal
8.5 Module C4 – Disposal
| Aspect | C-03 (Buildings) / C-08 (Products) LCA modelling of landfill/disposal | |||||||||||
Description |
Should general rules be defined regarding what is deposited and which LCA data to use? What is the timescale for modelling the fate of disposed material? | |||||||||||
| Related Study Goal |
☒ stand-alone LCA | ☒ comparative assertion | ||||||||||
| Related Study Phase |
☒ Goal and scope definition |
☐ Life cycle inventory analysis (LCI) |
☐ Life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) |
☐ Interpretation |
☐ Reporting |
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| Relevant for |  New buildings |
 Existing buildings |
Construction products |
Screening LCA |
Simplified LCA |
Complete LCA |
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Provisions |
This aspect depends on the background database used. LCA practitioners need to adopt the procedures from the background database, and have no specific influence on it. The fate of materials should be based on current practice (as a baseline scenario), and not predicted practice in the future (except for sensitivity analysis purposes). | |||||||||||
Rules from |
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Guidance |
Within building or product LCA studies, the depositing of material in landfill or other disposal mechanisms is typically not a focus of the study, and is modelled with the use of generic data from background databases. These databases have their own modelling principles concerning the fate of landfilled material. The practitioner cannot influence this aspect, but should understand the way in which landfill processes have been modelled. In some databases, emissions that occur after 100 years are identified separately, and their effect can therefore be considered separately. Databases may also have specific assumptions about the decay rates of biogenic material in landfill and the composition and capture rates for landfill gas, which may not relate to practice in the various Member States, or to current understanding. The practitioner should ensure that this aspect is not neglected. For example, organic materials should not be handled as though they were inert, as this might yield significant errors in the estimation of the fate of deposited material. The practitioner should ensure that the treatment of landfill and incineration processes is considered consistently with the datasets for the production of biogenic material (this should be the case if data are sourced from the same database). Module C4 covers the disposal of end-of-life construction material arising from the demolition of the building. The disposal of end-of-life material arising from the use phase (Modules B2–B5) is included in the individual module where the waste arises. Current landfilling rates and other disposal processes should be used to develop the scenarios for Module C4. The choice of LCA data for landfilling should correspond, as a minimum, to the different types of wastes (inert, non-hazardous and hazardous), although more detailed landfill models are available in many databases. In addition, the time period over which inputs/outputs should be inventoried from the point of disposal in landfill is 100 years [EN 15804 6.3.7]. For biogenic materials, it is of particular relevance to take account of the fate of the biogenic carbon when landfilled, considering the decay rate, the mix of carbon dioxide and methane produced from decay, and the landfill gas capture rate of the landfill. National assumptions for various materials and landfills vary widely. The extent to which biogenic carbon decays into methane at end of life also needs to be considered in LCA studies, although there is little consensus on exactly how much methane will be generated or released in an average landfill. In any event, the greenhouse gases released from biomass degradation will not be balanced by an equivalent amount of sequestered CO2, owing to the increased GWP of methane emission. National EPD programmes may prescribe landfill models, or the percentage of material that will be placed in landfill at the end of life. |
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| Aspect | D-01 Inclusion of reuse, recovery or recycling potentials (Module D) in building or product LCA | |||||||||||
Description |
Module D describes the net benefits related to exported energy and secondary materials, secondary fuels or secondary products resulting from reuse, recycling and energy recovery that take place beyond the system boundary for both products and buildings. Displaying Module D separately is a very recent outcome of expert discussions. Before, in some life cycle studies, Modules C (end of life) and D were presented jointly in one life cycle stage, and different approaches were used in other situations such as the use of recycled material. As this is not necessarily done any more, under what circumstances is it necessary or mandatory to include Module D in the life cycle results? | |||||||||||
| Related Study Goal |
☒ stand-alone LCA | ☒ comparative assertion | ||||||||||
| Related Study Phase |
☒ Goal and scope definition |
☐ Life cycle inventory analysis (LCI) |
☐ Life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) |
☐ Interpretation |
☐ Reporting |
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| Relevant for | New buildings |
Existing buildings |
Construction products |
 Screening LCA |
 Simplified LCA |
Complete LCA |
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Provisions |
EN 15978 for building level calculation states [8.8] that “If relevant and available, Module D addresses the net environmental benefits or loads resulting from reuse, recycling and energy recovery“, and [12.6] “The communication from the report may be simplified according to the following rules: […] if relevant information is provided at the product level on Module D, this information should be reported.” The first point states that Module D should be included if it is relevant, and data are available. The second suggests that if any product used in the building provides data for Module D, this must be reported at the building level, although this is not a mandatory requirement of the standard (‘should’, not ‘shall’).In general, Module D should be reported both on the product and at the building level, but it is clear from both EN 15804 and EN 15978 that Module D is provided “to help with transparency on the benefits and loads of processes beyond the system boundary of the object of assessment“. Deviating from EN 15978 for benchmarking purposes with other studies where recycling credits have been included, Module D may be included in the building life cycle, but other aspects of system boundary and treatment of recycling (such as use of the cut-off approach for inputs) may render such comparisons invalid. | |||||||||||
Rules from |
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Guidance |
If Module D data are not provided by manufacturers within the EPD, default values can be used, or values estimated by the building assessor. As these values may be worse than the calculated values for the product, this could be an incentive for producers to provide data at a product level. It could be argued that Module D is not relevant to the life cycle assessment of both products and buildings, as it is outside the system boundary, although the TC 350 standards state that Module D can be provided as part of the building assessment information to provide additional transparency on benefits and loads beyond the system boundary. The benefits of exported energy (for example from excess generation from integrated renewable, or from the capture of landfill gas from disposal in C4) must be reported in Module D, and this must be reported separately from any other flows, but Module D is an optional module for any product EPD, and at the building level EN 15978 states regarding Module D that “Where a material flow exits the system boundary and has an economic value or has reached the end-of-waste stage and substitutes another product, then the impacts may be calculated” [7.4.6], and 8.1 states “If information on Module D is communicated in a building assessment“, which shows that it is not a requirement that it be communicated. It is clear that Module D does not need to be calculated for all materials; only where this is defined at a product level must it also be considered in Module D at the building level. However, depending on the relevance of and attitude to the information provided in Module D, practitioners are free to generate data within Module D for products that have not provided this information within their EPD, subject to the normal rules for scenarios regarding current practice. The system boundary for the building life cycle may be extended to include Module D if full life cycle results are assessed in a context where credits due to system expansion are typically accounted for. This is, for instance, the case in the German Sustainable Building labelling system (DGNB). The practitioner should be very clear that changing the system boundary of the object of assessment may introduce the possibility of double-counting benefits or loads, and should ensure this does not occur. The other use of Module D is to assess design for dismantling or recycling building alternatives. |
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Back to 7 Aspects concerning Module D
| Aspect | D-02 Reuse – water consumption | |||||||||||
Description |
There are different quality levels of water – freshwater, rainwater, greywater and waste water. Depending on these quality levels water can be used for different applications (e.g. rainwater for washing clothes). How and under what circumstances is it possible to obtain benefits from the reuse of water? | |||||||||||
| Related Study Goal |
☒ stand-alone LCA | ☒ comparative assertion | ||||||||||
| Related Study Phase |
☒ Goal and scope definition |
☐ Life cycle inventory analysis (LCI) |
☐ Life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) |
☐ Interpretation |
☐ Reporting |
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| Relevant for | New buildings |
Existing buildings |
Construction products |
Screening LCA |
 Simplified LCA |
 Complete LCA |
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Provisions |
Module D looks at the loads and benefits of the net output flow, if relevant and available. If water outputs or any output flow at EoL (not production waste) are reused, then to calculate the net output flow, any use of similar reused water or material as an input in Modules A1–C4 must be considered to calculate the net flow (output − input = net output flow). If there is a net output flow, then the impacts associated with any reuse processes after the ‘end-of-waste state’ can be included in Module D, together with a credit associated with the avoided production of the virgin product. | |||||||||||
Rules from |
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Guidance |
If any water from the building is reused outside the building, then the benefits of this use (credit for virgin water extraction and treatment, together with any impacts from the system boundary before substitutive use) are included in Module D. If a waste material or waste energy is recycled, then the impacts associated with any processes after the ‘end-of-waste state’ before it can be used to substitute primary material can be included in Module D, together with a credit associated with the production of the virgin product it substitutes. |
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Back to 7 Aspects concerning Module D
| Aspect | D-03 Credits for recycling and energy recovery | |||||||||||
Description |
How should credits for recycling and energy recovery be allowed for? | |||||||||||
| Related Study Goal |
☒ stand-alone LCA | ☒ comparative assertion | ||||||||||
| Related Study Phase |
☒ Goal and scope definition |
☐ Life cycle inventory analysis (LCI) |
☐ Life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) |
☐ Interpretation |
☐ Reporting |
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| Relevant for | New buildings |
Existing buildings |
Construction products |
Screening LCA |
Simplified LCA |
Complete LCA |
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Provisions |
Where recycled material or energy recovered at end of life are also used in the production of products (A1–A3), in Modules B1–B5 or C1–C4, then the net output flow is calculated as total output − total input. If there is a net output flow that provides benefits beyond the system boundary (as it produces material or energy that substitutes for virgin production), then the processes beyond the system boundary required to produce the recycled material or recovered energy substituted can be provided in Module D, together with a credit calculated by deducting the impact of producing the material or energy from virgin resources. For materials, this will be the virgin production route. For energy, this will be the use of the typical energy mix for heating (for heat energy) or the grid mix (for electrical energy), excluding secondary energy. In practice, unless energy from waste is a significant part of the energy or grid mix, the national mix can be used. | |||||||||||
Rules from |
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Guidance |
If the recycled product cannot substitute the primary product completely (e.g. it has 95% of the relevant functional equivalence), a justified value correction factor should be used to reflect this in the credit calculation. If waste is burned with less than 60% energy recovery, it has to be classified as a disposal process rather than a recovery process, and the process must be reported in Module C4. There may still be benefits for the production of energy beyond the system boundary that can be shown in Module D (as with landfilling and the recovery of gas from landfilling). For example, if there was a net output flow of electricity, then the grid mix of electricity (excluding any secondary energy sources) should be used to credit the flow. Note that the incineration of waste (i.e. material that is considered waste because it has not reached the end-of-waste state) may also be more efficient than 60%, but it must still be considered as a disposal process. |
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Back to 7 Aspects concerning Module D
This chapter addresses aspects that are related to life cycle stage D. All the aspects of this chapter provide provisions, rules and guidance for the goal and scope definition and the inventory analysis steps according to [ISO 14040] and [ISO 14044].
Module D makes it possible to quantify the reuse, recovery and recycling potential of a building or a building product. This module may be of interest in assessing and comparing designs for dismantling, or designs for recycling alternatives.
The following list describes the addressed aspects in Module D.