CORRIM: Life-Cycle Environmental Performance of Renewable Building Materials

JUNE 2004 Assessments of material flows and their environmental consequences are increasingly needed to address an expanding list of environmental performance issues. An analysis of the flow of mass, energy, and carbon from resources (such as a forest or mine pit) to products, and ultimately to disposal in a landfill or by recycling, is a complex undertaking. Any attempt to identify the environmental consequences of the life-cycle of houses constructed from alternative materials is burdened by enormous data requirements in order to characterize each stage of a product’s life-cycle. The complexity of modern house construction exacerbates the analysis, because many products made from different materials are used. In addition, the time element associated with the growth of forests, the manufacturing of the wood products, and the duration of the useful life of a house and its many components adds another layer of complexity. In 1996, the Consortium for Research on Renewable Industrial Materials (CORRIM) was formed by 15 research institutions as a nonprofit entity that would undertake research on the use of wood as a renewable material. In 1998, CORRIM published a 22-module research plan and protocol (CORRIM 1998) to develop a life-cycle assessment (LCA) for residential structures and other wood uses. The research plan required development of a complete life-cycle inventory (LCI) of all environmental inputs and outputs from forest regeneration through product manufacturing, building construction, use, maintenance, and disposal. Later, CORRIM published a summary and a Phase I Interim Report on the progress with a provisional LCI dataCORRIM: Life-Cycle Environmental Performance of Renewable Building Materials