Environmental Evaluation of Building Materials of 5 Slovak Buildings

Building activity has recently led to the deterioration of environment and has become unsustainable. Several strategies have been introduced in order to minimize consumption of energy and resulting CO₂ emissions having their origin in the operational phase. But also other stages of Life Cycle should are important to identify the overall environmental impact of construction sector. In this paper 5 similar Slovak buildings (family houses) were analyzed in terms of environmental performance of building materials used for their structures. Evaluation included the weight of used materials, embodied energy and embodied CO₂ and SO₂ emissions. Analysis has proven that the selection of building materials is an important factor which influences the environmental profile. Findings of the case study indicated that materials like concrete, ceramic or thermal insulation materials based on polystyrene and mineral wool are ones with the most negative environmental impact.