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Life Cycle Assessment of Road Pavements That Incorporate Waste Reuse: A Systematic Review and Guidelines Proposal
Summary
This systematic review examines life cycle assessments of roads built with recycled waste materials, including plastic. The research evaluates whether incorporating waste into road construction is truly more environmentally sustainable across the full life cycle. Using plastic waste in road building is one approach to keeping it out of the environment, though concerns remain about microplastic release from road surfaces over time.
Life cycle assessment (LCA) is a methodology that has been widely used to evaluate the environmental impact of products and processes throughout entire life cycles. In this context, the reuse of waste in paved road construction is a practice that has received increasing attention as a sustainable alternative to solid waste disposal. This article presents a systematic review of existing studies on the LCA of paved roads that incorporate waste reuse and proposes a guideline for LCA in this context. Several criteria were analyzed in the articles, and the results showed that only 5% of the articles followed all the recommendations set out in ISO 14040. The proposed guideline aims to provide guidance for future research and includes recommendations for each of the steps involved in LCA, from defining the objectives and scope of the study to interpreting the results.
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