ENVIRONMENTAL PERFORMANCE OF STEEL

Abstract

Developing in a sustainable manner is a key issue in the construction sector, given that the sector accounts not only for a significant portion of commodity flows across countries, but also for the heavy consumption of these non-renewable resources. In fact, sustainable development in the construction sector has been recognised by the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro since 1992. One way for the sector to develop in a sustainable manner is to look at the resource efficiency of the materials being used in the construction process. It is with this regard that the author has chosen to embark on the following topic. The aim of this paper is to understand how resource-efficient steel is as a building material in Singapore’s construction industry. One of the ways to assess the sustainability of steel in Singapore is to determine the ecological rucksack of steel used here. The quantification of environmental burden of building material can hence be achieved by evaluating the ecological rucksack of building material based on “Material Input per Service” methodology. This paper will begin with an introduction to the ecological rucksack concept. Secondly, various steelmaking methods are examined to understand the use of resources during different production processes. It will be followed by a section on the calculation of the ecological rucksack of steel products used in Singapore, namely the primary and secondary steel. This leads to a discussion on the calculations and findings, where the ecological rucksack of various steel products will be compared to one another to understand the resource intensity of each type of steel.